Vol. II, No. 1 
November, 1918 





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Union Theological Seminary 
Bulletin 


a Sra 


The Inauguration of 


Se ee 


a Prorgssor FLEMING 
: Proressor WarD 
And 

i PRoFEssoR LYMAN 





Published by the Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York 


3041 BROADWAY 
NEW YORK 











‘as second-c ass ma er Novemb: 
fice at New York, N. Y. 
- Act of August 24, 





The Union Theological Seminary 
in the City of New York 


Exercises Connected with the Inauguration of | 


The Rev. Daniet Jounson Fiemina, Ph.D. 


Professor ot Missions 


The Rev. Harry Freperick Warp, M.A. 


Professor of Christian Ethics 


The Rev. Eucene WitiiaAm Lyman, D.D. 


Professor of the Philosophy of Religion 


At the Opening Service of the Eighty-Third 
Academic Year of the Seminary 
September Twenty-Sixth 
Nineteen Hundred and Eighteen 


Together with an Address 
Given at the Eighty-Second Commencement 
May Fourteenth, Nineteen Hundred and Eighteen 
By The Rev. Henry Preservep Smita, D.D. 


Professor of Hebrew and the Cognate Languages 


MCMXVIII 





CONTENTS 


THE ORDER OF SERVICE 


I] 


THE INAUGURATION EXERCISES 


IIl 


THE CHARGE 


IV 


THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS BY PROFESSOR FLEMING . 


V 


THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS BY PROFESSOR WARD 


VI 


THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS BY PROFESSOR LYMAN . 


VII 


THE COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS BY PROFESSOR SMITH . 


Page 


I2 


Pat 


30 


D0 


I 


THE ORDER OF SERVICE 


. ORGAN PRELUDE 


PROCESSIONAL HYMN 304: 
“THE CHURCH’S ONE FOUNDATION” 


. THe Lorp’s PRAYER 


4. HyMNn 665: 


“AMERICA” 


5. SCRIPTURE LESSON 


10. 


II. 


i. 


12: 
14. 


15. 


STATEMENT William M. Kingsley, M.A. 
President of the Board of Directors 


READING OF THE PREAMBLE TO THE CONSTITUTION: 
DECLARATION BY THE PROFESSORS-ELECT 


DECLARATION The President of the Board of Directors 
PRAYER - The Rev. Joseph Dunn Burrell, D.D. 
CHARGE The Rev. Anson P. Atterbury, D.D. 


On behalf of the Board of Directors | 


INAUGURAL ADDRESSES: 
“CHRISTIANIZING A WORLD” | 
Professor Fleming 
“THE PRESENT TASK OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS” 
Professor Ward 
“THE RELIGION OF DEMOCRACY” 
Professor Lyman 
HYMN 300: 
“LORD OF OUR LIFE, AND GOD OF OUR SALVATION” 


PRAYER AND BENEDICTION 


RECESSIONAL HYMN 594: 
“FORWARD! BE OUR WATCHWORD” 


ORGAN POSTLUDE 


II 
THE INAUGURATION EXERCISES 


The inauguration of the Rev. Daniel Johnson Fleming, 
Ph.D., as Professor of Missions, of the Rev. Harry Frederick 
Ward, M.A., as Professor of Christian Ethics, and of the Rev. 
Eugene William Lyman, D.D., as Professor of the Philosophy 
of Religion, took place on Thursday, September 26, 1918, at 
four o'clock, in the Chapel of the Seminary, at the Opening 
Service of the Eighty-third Academic Year. 

After devotional exercises the President of the Board of Direc- 
tors, Mr. William M. Kingsley, made the following statement: 

“On the twelfth of March of the present year the Board of 
Directors of Union Theological Seminary appointed three new 
professors, whom we are now to induct into office. The Rev. 
DANIEL JOHNSON FLEMING, Ph.D., since 1915 Director of the 
Department of Foreign Service in this Seminary, is to be 
inducted into a new Professorship of Missions; the Rev. 
HARRY FREDERICK WARD, M.A., into the vacant Professor- 
ship of Christian Ethics, and the Rev. EUGENE WILLIAM 
Lyman, D.D., into the Marcellus Hartley Professorship of the 
Philosophy of Religion, formerly the Marcellus Hartley Pro- 
fessorship of the Philosophy and History of Religion and Mis- 
sions. The latter Professorship has been held since 1914 by Pro- 
fessor Hume, who has been transferred, at his own desire, to the 
new Charles Butler Professorship of the History of Religions. 

The organic law of the Seminary requires each member of 
the Faculty when entering upon his office to make a certain 
Declaration, after the reading of the Preamble to the Constitu- 
tion of the Seminary. I will now ask President McGiffert to 
read the Preamble to the Constitution and the relevant portion 
of the Charter.” 


PREAMBLE TO THE CONSTITUTION 
That the design of the Founders of this Institution may 
be fully known to all to whom it may concern, and be sacredly 
regarded by the Directors, Professors and Students, it is 
judged proper to make the following preliminary statement: 


6 


1. A number of Christians, clergymen and laymen, in the 
cities of New York and Brooklyn, deeply impressed with the 
claims of the world upon the Church of Christ to furnish a 
competent supply of well-educated and pious ministers of 
correct principles to preach the gospel to every creature; im- 
pressed also with the inadequacy of all existing means for this 
purpose; and believing that large cities furnish many peculiar 
facilities and advantages for conducting theological education; 
after several meetings for consultation and prayer, 

RESOLVED unanimously, in humble dependence on the 
grace of God, to attempt the establishment of a Theological 
Seminary in the City of New York. 

2. This Institution (while it will receive others to the 
advantages it may furnish) is principally designed for such 
young men in the cities of New York and Brooklyn as are, or 
may be, desirous of pursuing a course of theological study, and 
whose circumstances render it inconvenient for them to go 
from home for this purpose. 

3. It is the design of the Founders to furnish the means of 
a full and thorough education, in all the subjects taught in 
the best Theological Seminaries in the United States, and also 
to embrace therewith a thorough knowledge of the standards 
of faith and discipline of the Presbyterian Church. 

4. Being fully persuaded that vital godliness well proved, 
a thorough education, and a wholesome practical training in 
works of benevolence and pastoral labors, are all essentially 
necessary to meet the wants and promote the best interests of 
the kingdom of Christ, the Founders of this Seminary design 
that its Students, living and acting under pastoral influence, 
and performing the important duties of church members in 
the several churches to which they belong, or with which they 
worship, in prayer-meetings, in the instruction of Sabbath- 
schools and Bible-classes, and being conversant with all the 
social benevolent efforts in this important location, shall have 
the opportunity of adding to solid learning and true piety, 
enlightened experience. 

5. By the foregoing advantages, the Founders hope and 
expect, with the blessing of God, to call forth from these two 
flourishing cities, and to enlist in the service of Christ and in 
the work of the ministry, genius, talent, enlightened piety and 


7 


missionary zeal; and to qualify many for the labors and 
management of the various religious institutions, seminaries of 
learning and enterprises of benevolence, which characterize 
the present times. 

6. Finally, it is the design of the Founders to provide a 
Theological Seminary in the midst of the greatest and most 
growing community in America, around which all men of 
moderate views and feelings, who desire to live free from party 
strife, and to stand aloof from all the extremes of doctrinal 
speculation, practical radicalism and ecclesiastical domination, 
may cordially and affectionately rally. 


FROM THE CHARTER OF THE SEMINARY 


Paragraph 5: Equal privileges of admission and instruc- 
tion, with all the advantages of the Institution, shall be allowed 
to students of every denomination of Christians. 


Mr. Kingsley then propounded the following question: 


“Do you promise to maintain the principles and purposes 
of this institution, as set forth in the Preamble adopted by the 
Founders on the 18th day of January, 1836, and in the Charter 
granted by the Legislature of the State of New York on the 
27th of March, 1839, and adopted by the Board of Directors 
on the 20th day of December, 1839?” 


After answers in the affirmative, Mr. Kingsley said: 


“The Rev. DANIEL JOHNSON FLEMING, the Rev. HARRY 
FREDERICK WARD and the Rev. EUGENE WILLIAM LYMAN, 
having been chosen, by the Board of Directors, Professors in 
this institution, and having made in this public manner the 
required declaration, I now declare them duly inaugurated 
Professors in Union Theological Seminary, and as such entitled 
to discharge all the duties and to enjoy all the rights and 
privileges of their Professorships.” 


The Prayer of Installation was offered by the Rev. Joseph 
Dunn Burrell, D.D., of the Board of Directors, the Charge 
to the three professors was given by the Rev. Anson P. Atter- 
bury, Ph.D., D.D., on behalf of the Board of Directors, and 
the professors then delivered their Inaugural Addresses. 


Ill 


THE CHARGE 
on behalf of the Board of Directors 
By 


THE REVEREND ANSON P. ATTERBURY, PH.D., D.D. 


Professors Fleming, Ward and Lyman: 


Three professors at one time and of such size and weight!— 
a gargantuan feast for the Seminary. We congratulate our- 
selves upon this splendid accession to its forces intellectual 
and spiritual. Our extremely orthodox friends may set their 
souls at rest. Here are three men of orthodoxy, yet liberality 
of thought. This addition of so much real intellectuality and 
spirituality to the already large stock accumulated by the 
older members of the faculty is welcomed by the Directors 
and all the friends of this great institution. We have much, 
but we need more. 

This business of making men out of boys, leaders out of the 
common run of humanity, officers out of privates, ministers 
out of youth—it is not at all easy, and it is all-important. 
Nature does something towards this, but art as incorporated 
in the Seminary does more. That is why you are inaugurated 
into your various professorships today—to take hold of this 
more or less crude soul material that comes to this institution 
in successive years, and mould it into shape of spinitual beauty, 
and breathe into it the Spirit Divine. 

Of course, your sphere of activity and influence will be 
larger than that contained within this quadrangle. It is one 
of the glories of an institution like this that the members of 
its faculty write books that illumine, and sometimes amaze 
the world at large. The Directors look on, and sometimes 
read, with more or less of appreciation and satisfaction. But 
may I be permitted to say that your real business is something 
other than this writing of boboks—important as that by-product 
may be? It is for you to deal with these young men in your 
classes in such way that they shall become yourselves, but 


2 


better; themselves in their largest possibilities; God’s self, 
incorporated, in this war-world of human life. 

If this be your supreme thought, it will give the tone, the 
“motif,” to the sweet music of your seminary life and work. 
You will seek to put something of your own purely aspiring 
personalities into each of your students. It is not so much 
ideas, as yourself, that you are to give to them. As Lowell 
reminds us, you know, “the gift without the giver is bare.” 
Present to them the great thoughts of the ages past, the great 
problems to be faced in the years to come, all possible of solu- 
tion for the vexed questions of life here and hereafter, vision 
into the mind of God—yes! do all of this that you can. But 
force them to think of you personally as an inspiring ideal for 
their lives. “How then did religion spread from its living 
source in the Teacher to multitudes?” asks William Barry in 
his study of Cardinal Newman. “The answer was, by personal 
influence, which offered a pattern of it, and took hold of others 
as a charm.” 

The ideas that you will be expected to impart to these young 
men will be—some of them true, some of them, perhaps, to be 
proved later more or less untrue, many of them absolutely 
essential for “the man of God, thoroughly furnished unto every 
good work.” Some few of these ideas you may in small part 
originate; most of them you will have gathered from others 
but made your own, and vivified for your classes. When I was 
a student in this Seminary it was said of one of the professors, 
honored and loved, that he would go to Germany every sum- 
mer to pick up new ideas, and would return to dilute and retail 
them for American consumption. The American theological 
digestion was not as vigorous then as now. 

But your real impartation to these students will be yourself. 
Hence the imperative need of persistent spiritual culture of 
your own souls. The theological professor needs, above all 
men, spiritual culture—to pray, attend public worship, study 
God’s word devotionally, develop the inner life of holiness, 
guard the inner self from world-stain, practise with Brother 
Lawrence the “Presence of God,” with Thomas a Kempis the 
“Tmitation of Christ.” 

Perhaps some neglect this. It is strange—but theological 
professors are not always exemplars of the higher spiritual life. 


IO 


Some of the most spiritually inspiring personalities that I have 
known have been in these chairs. But in retired clergymen 
and seminary professors we do meet with some in whom the 
lamp of God is burning somewhat dimly in the temple of the 
Lord—and with a few “Ichabod” is written on the brow. 

Do not make this Seminary a graveyard for the higher 
spiritual possibilities of your own souls. If you do, you will 
bury with yourself some of these young men. 

In order thus to inspire your students, intellectually and 
spiritually, it will be necessary for you to enter to some extent 
into the inner personal life of at least some of them. You can- 
not do it with all; but every one of these young men should 
have, as close and trusted personal friend, some one, or more, 
of this faculty. Make yourselves the makers, under Divine 
inspiration, of these young men. But you can do this only 
by giving something more than mere ideas; you must give 
direct personal influence, you must give yourselves. 

This great war is upon us. Our hearts are filled with high 
and holy aspiration—to make the world safe for a democracy 
which shall mean righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy 
Spirit. But a far greater struggle is before us, in the years to 
come—to make democracy safe for the world. The antithesis 
is not mine, as you know. But the thought presses upon us 
irresistibly at this time. Great social, world-wide problems are | 
already forcing themselves upon us. Leadership in the Divine 
solution of these questions lies with you now, and will lie more 
largely with some of these young men whom you will have the 
chance to “make” in this institution. What a responsibility! 
What a glory of service, if at the end you hear the Master 
say to you, “Well done!” 

Our armies will disband soon, after having fulfilled, and 
grandly, their part of the struggle in these years of tensest 
effort. But the greater warfare will go on, through the cen- 
turies. And in this your undying personalities, incorporated 
in the thoughts and deeds of successive generations through 
the youth into whom you will have put yourselves, will have 
large part in that struggle of the good against the evil, which 
shall end only beyond the possibility of present human thought. 
At some time, we know, the full victory will be reached: “He 
shall reign whose right it is to reign.” 


BL 


We think with gratitude and affection, especially in such 
a service as is this, of those whose munificent gifts have made 
possible, through these material structures, this great sphere 
of spiritual possibility. Their names are written in these 
stones, the faces of some of them look down upon us from the 
walls of the Directors’ room. They have transmuted money 
into spirit—creating the material foundation for the grandeur 
and usefulness of this institution. And there is need and 
opportunity for more of such gifts. But you professors have 
something to give that is even more important. You can give 
yourselves. This gift of self is really the gift of the Christ 
within yourselves. And perhaps the most effective work that 
you will do will be in the hours outside of the class-rooms, in 
the sacred privacy of personal Christian friendship. 

So, at the end of this charge, let me phrase the thought that 
has been in my mind, and that I have attempted to give to you. 
Self and the Seminary. The gift of yourselves to these young 
men. But that inner self must be worth the giving. It is 
because we are sure that it is thus worthy that we welcome 
you today. 


I2 


IV 


THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS 
By 
PROFESSOR FLEMING 


CHRISTIANIZING A WORLD 


In these days we are witnessing the birth pangs of a new - 
world order. Humanity, having been stirred to its depths, is 
awakening to an inter-racial consciousness. Mankind can 
comprehend, therefore, as never before, a common objective 
for endeavor. Such a common cause must be sufficiently 
definite, sane and appealing to arouse a mighty community of 
interest and loyalty. Far surpassing any other purpose that 
could unify a world is that one involved in the internationalism 
implicit in Christianity. It confidently asks humanity to rise 
to the comprehensiveness of Jesus’ love, and to take as its 
common cause no less an object than the Christianization of a 
world. Six conditions make this confidence especially rea- 
sonable in our day. | 

In the first place, modern consciousness includes awareness 
of the solidarity of the human family. The nineteenth century 
bequeathed to the twentieth an almost staggering problem of 
world-embracing inter-relationships. But the great war has 
vastly deepened mankind’s appreciation of mutuality in inter- 
national privilege and responsibility. It has graphically mani- 
fested the implications of monotheism. That we are members 
one of another was yesterday a mere phrase. Today, through 
mutual service and sacrifice, it has become a vivid reality to 
young and old in every home, and may be placed amongst the 
assets of mankind. The time, therefore, has forever passed for 
living unto oneself alone. Ever more widespread becomes the 
conviction that humanity is a living, vital, interpenetrating 
organism, and that the life of one God flows through all. 
Henceforth, therefore, any great objective must take into 
consideration the whole world. 


13 


Furthermore, there has arisen a new conception of human 
need. And response to need has ever been one of the main- 
springs of Christianity’s outreach. Men used to dwell on the 
fate of lost souls in a world to come. The necessity of the 
world’s salvation was stated in abstract, a priori and specu- 
‘lative terms. But in modern times the significant discovery 
became operative that man’s life is socially conditioned. With 
the rise of the ethico-social movement men began to demand a 
salvation for the world that is. Missionary methods and ob- 
jectives are being revised to square with the fact that man 
is a psycho-physical organism and that environment and social 
heritage have vital bearings on highest life. It is the concrete 
fact and the practical situation that now calls forth response. 
Information is so accessible that we can grasp the world’s 
need, not only extensively as it exists in China, Japan, India, 
South America, Africa, the Near East and the so-called 
Christian nations; but even more intensively—the need for 
the Christianization of every sphere of human activity. We 
see that the Gospel is not merely for the whole world, but for 
the whole of life. Missionaries seek to bring Christ to bear 
not only upon new continents, but upon each untouched aspect 
of life within those continents. 

Furthermore sociology has enabled us to comprehend man’s 
total need and to analyze it as sevenfold: hygienic, economic, 
educational, social, aesthetic, moral and religious. To make 
health the possible attainment for every people; to abolish 
the world around, all necessity for existence below the poverty 
line; to enable each human being through education to enter 
as far as possible into his heritage; to discover and to eradicate 
all causes of social maladjustment; to develop capacities of re- 
sponse to beauty in every form; to pierce down with discrimi- 
nation into what is right, and to have the will to do it; to 
know our Father and the One whom he has sent—for all these 
ends we see that we are to be co-workers with God. Ministry 
to each of these aspects of world-need is seen to be a real part 
in the establishment of the reign of God on earth. 

And yet while all this sevenfold need must be met in God’s 
ideal democracy, experience shows that we dare not evaluate 
the various aspects of man’s deficiency as being equally impor- 
tant. There is a need which, if it remains unmet, it profiteth a 


14 


man nothing to have gained the whole world of other values. 
Mankind’s greatest need is still for that inward renewal which 
cometh from above. Henceforth, therefore, the Christian 
objective will take into consideration every form of human 
need, but will, with even clearer conviction, place foremost 
reconstruction from within. 

Another distinctly modern stimulus to the Christianization 
of our world comes from researches in anthropology, ethnology 
and comparative religion. These fields of study have laid the 
basis of a fundamental respect for the capacities and attainments 
of other peoples. Emphasis can now be placed not primarily 
on man’s lack, but upon his latent possibilities. It is becoming 
evident that no limit can be set to any race for its growth in 
knowledge, in power, in character and in a wondrous, pro- 
gressive sharing of the life of God. A growing confidence is 
being established that each people can make to the world a 
unique contribution without which humanity would be the 
poorer. Since there is a light that lighteth every man coming 
into the world, and since amongst no nation hath he left 
himself without witness, builders of a new world order expect 
to find in each land tokens of the spirit’s work. Christian mis- 
sionaries enthusiastically recognize variety of endowment and 
faculty amongst all the peoples of God’s great family, and they 
strive to fire the imagination of mankind with the glorious 
vision of a democracy of God into which shall have been 
brought the life and thought and talents of every section of 
the human race as transformed by Jesus Christ. In this 
expectancy of reciprocity in service all patronizing condescen- - 
sion is removed. Rather is there the conviction that we shall 
never apprehend all that Christ is until we see him bodied forth 
in every nation through gifts which have been transfigured 
through his influence. 

Furthermore, the last four years have given us a new con- 
ception of human resources. We knew that readiness to pay the 
cost was one of the characteristics in the case of the ideal mis- 
sionary; but who had had faith to believe that such boundless 
reservoirs of sacrificial life-investment existed in the average 
man? We knew that the church had never even glimpsed the 
extent of financial support needed for her world enterprise; 
but who had ever dreamed that such astounding material re- 


15 


sources could be available for an unselfish venture? In the 
achievement of union movements the foreign field has led a 
backward church; but the war has set absolutely new stan- 
dards in the thorough-going mobilization of cooperative effort, 
and is shattering the isolation of the church’s older individu- 
alism. We have bemoaned a church whose apathy to the 
missionary enterprise and whose apparent lack of all leadership 
in the war have made some wonder whether its day had passed. 
But the war has shown how essential is organization; and 
Christian leaders realize that in the church, if thoroughly re- 
constructed for new tasks and conditions, they have an 
international organization of unrivaled potentiality. We have 
struggled along with the problem of missionary education; 
but unparalleled attainments in publicity in connection with 
the war make the effort seem not impossible to educate a world 
to understand and to undertake the missionary enterprise. 
Thus absolutely untapped springs of power in human nature 
stimulate us to a world task. 

But no great missionary movement ever became dynamic 
apart from a spiritual awakening. In the last analysis the 
measure of our Christian outreach to the world is the measure 
of our valuation of Jesus Christ. Has the modern world any 
fresh conviction as to the priceless treasure that it has in 
Christ? Powerful modern tendencies such as the scientific 
method and evolution, the new psychology and the historic 
method, the new social emphasis and the comparative study of 
religions have, within recent years, completely changed the 
face of theology. And yet these very influences have deepened 
the sure conviction that Jesus Christ is the most significant 
personality in all history. The year nineteen hundred and 
fourteen witnessed a most collossal repudiation of the spirit of 
Christ. Yet the world is turning to him as never before for 
what is divine. Men find in him the way, the truth, the light, 
the life. In him we get the promise of a perfected humanity, 
and in him we find the only hopeful solution of the relationship 
of man toman. To him can be traced the greatest forces mak- 
ing for the betterment of civilization. Mankind is by nature 
capable of becoming what we call Christian, and Jesus Christ 
has been the stimulus which pre-eminently elicits this kind of 
life. The prize we want to share with others is this unique 


16 


stimulus, 7. e., the person of Christ. We tell others about our 
experience, and share with them the explanations of our 
experience in order that they may be reasonably induced to 
subject themselves to his influence, to put themselves con- 
tinuously, receptively and obediently in his presence, to let 
his life play upon theirs, transforming, infilling, regenerating. 

The sixth and most fundamental stimulus to the Christian- 
ization of our world comes from a fresh interpretation of the 
significance of life upon this planet. We begin to see that God, 
who is pre-eminently characterized by forth-giving, self- 
sacrificing, resourceful, constructive love, is perpetually en- 
deavoring to incarnate himself in humanity; that his greatest 
concern is the creation of personalities like his own; that God 
has set earth’s few continents and few peoples amongst the 
myriad stars as man’s kindergarten for eternity. 

Still further we see that God’s purpose goes far beyond the 
perfecting of isolated units. His purpose is social. He has set 
us within a potential democracy of God in order that, through 
discipline, we and it may attain together. His interest is not 
merely in the individual but in the great unit—the human 
family. In suffering, fruitage, growth and salvation we are 
bound up inextricably with the Father’s other children. 

But God’s purpose does not end even here. Still more won- 
derful is it to realize that he wants us to be one with him in 
this ideal democracy, that he seeks our fellowship, that divine 
re-inforcement is within us for a great world task, that God 
calls us to cooperative creativity in the Christianization of a 
world. 

In this faith as to the character and purpose and sufficiency 
of our God is found Christianity’s greatest contribution to our 
day. In it we find the ultimate foundation for a faith large 
enough to reconstruct a world. The faith Jesus had in the God 
he knew is the only faith big enough for these great tasks. If 
we hold our Lord’s convictions as to the character of God there 
can be nothing impossible in the building of a world into a 
glorious democracy of God. 

With the conjunction of such conditions as have been out- 
lined, there should be possible in our time the greatest mis- 
sionary movement of all history. The initial impulse to the 
task came nineteen hundred years ago when, in Jesus Christ, 


17 


the face of God was uniquely revealed to men and they beheld 
his glory. Within three centuries the early Christians made 
their message known throughout the Mediterranean area. 
After some two centuries more of assimilation a second era of 
expansion sent Christianity through northern Europe. By 
the end of the Middle Ages, with the opening of the great ocean 
routes and voyages of discovery, we began to know our world 
a little better, and a third great expansive era of Christianity 
began with Xavier for the Catholics, and with Carey for the 
Protestants. Consecrated spirits in those days yearned ‘to 
spread their good news in every land, but their world was 
still vague, hard to visualize even in its physical features and 
resources, and almost unknown in its cultural aspects. 

Now, however, through the patient researches of innumer- 
able students, through travel, wire, film and press, our whole 
world stands revealed. Men are acquiring a consciousness of 
humanity; they are passing from parochial to world thought; 
they are seeing that the modern mind and heart and conscience 
can be limited by no frontiers. Furthermore, nothing less than 
an unprecedented exhibition of the Christ spirit can offset the 
unrighteous influences issuing from many phases of so-called 
Christendom. Surely this generation is called to inaugurate a 
fourth great missionary era for the Christianization of a 
world. 


II 


Towards this end, however, if the sacrifice, the devotion 
and the loyalty of mankind are to be enlisted, practical meas- 
ures must be taken. 

It is evident that the home church must be educated and 
aroused to this task. To her condition can be traced Christian- 
ity’s greatest failures abroad. But if the church is to sound a 
rallying call for a great adventure, her seminaries must burn 
with the fires of a world enthusiasm. Ministers to home 
churches must be sent forth to do their work against a world 
background. They must attain their local objectives as their 
part toward a world task. In that sense for them and for 
their congregations there should be but one field, and that 
field should be the world. They should be led to realize that 
to be Christian, without at the same time being missionary, is 


18 


a contradiction in terms; that the missionary spirit is just the 
normal Christian attitude toward the world and its needs. 

As a still further practical measure, very much more careful 
preparation must be given to the church's ambassadors who are to 
go abroad. 

They must get a thorough grasp of what Christianity is. 
And very few realize what patient, steady, continued work this 
requires. It is so easy to go forth with only a partial aspect 
of our religion as one’s gospel. But Christianity, thus re- 
stricted, is deservedly rejected or produces only znemic fol- 
lowers, simply because Christianity in all its rich, full, uni- 
versal, satisfying power was not known or appreciated by the 
messenger. Part of this understanding of Christianity will be 
to see the points in which it differs most fundamentally from 
other religions; how the Christian message may be most 
winsomely and convincingly stated for a particular people, 
and how their characteristic objections may be most satis- 
factorily met. There is the psychological and educational 
problem of understanding the minds to whom the message is 
to be addressed; for, if Christianity is to seem any more than 
an alien cult, the message must come from a mind that is 
appreciative of the religious thought, national aspirations and 
social conditions of those to whom it is given. With unanimity 
Christian statesmen declare that these and other technical _ 
and professional qualifications must be imparted to the mission- 
aries of the church. The passing of the day of individualism 
and pioneering in missions, the growing complexity of the 
work, a new understanding of the inherent difficulties in the 
task, a developing science of missions as the result of the 
comparative study of the missionary enterprise in different 
centuries as well as in different lands—such new factors de- 
mand an entirely new emphasis on missionary preparation. 

To these two needs, concerning the home church and con- 
cerning the preparation of her ambassadors abroad, Union 
Theological Seminary has responded. Its traditions of scholar- 
ship, reverent yet fearless; its spirit at once inclusive, progres- 
sive and free; its catholicity of temper; its university 
connections; its metropolitan location—these facts should 
enable this seminary to send forth for the Christianization of a 
world, whether the service be geographically home or foreign, 


19 


men with accurate understanding, broadened sympathies, 
and stirred by the highest loyalties. 

World service, however, is no new conception to this institu- 
tion. The Founders, in the Preamble adopted on the 18th 
day of January, 1836, expressed the hope and expectation of 
calling forth missionary zeal. One of the earliest actions of the 
Faculty after its organization was to approve of a request 
made by the students for the formation of a Society of Inquiry 
respecting Missions—a society that has had a continuous 
existence for eighty-one years. One out of every twelve or- 
dained alumni have entered mission service. Four Professors 
have held chairs whose very titles recognize the place of 
missions in their work, vzz., George Lewis Prentice who, in 
1873, for the first time in this country, introduced lectures on 
missions into the regular curriculum of theological study; 
Charles Cuthbert Hall whose winsome love, expressing itself 
in sympathetic appreciation of individual and people and alien 
faith, was coupled with intense loyalty and enthusiasm for the 
unique satisfactions in Jesus Christ; George William Knox 
whose fascinating lectures full of penetrating insight set in- 
delibly before us standards of scholarship and statesmanship 
in the Kingdom of God; and Robert Ernest Hume whose 
Christian comradeship, both as fellow student and now as 
colleague has been one of the great inspirations of my life. 
Further, it is significant that in the very year that the war 
broke out, a Department of Foreign Service was established; 
and now a full chair of Missions has been founded. 


IIl 


Directors, Faculty, Students and Friends of Union Theo- 
logical Seminary: We have been reviewing certain favorable 
conditions for an unprecedented expansion of Christianity and 
certain practical measures that must be taken. Such con- 
siderations make me contemplate the significant potentialities 
of the chair of missions in this seminary with a deep and 
humbling sense of responsibility. Each fresh view of the vast- 
ness of the opportunity impels a prayer for divine empower- 
ment, and also elicits a joyful renewal of utmost consecration. 
Moreover, in yielding myself to this work, a very real joy 
comes from the way in which the Faculty as a whole have 


20 


shown their interest in world service. For surely no mere 
addition of a chair nor enlargement of the curriculum by a few 
missionary courses, will enable a seminary to produce a world 
Christian. Each subject must be taught from a world back- 
ground. It is because a missionary consciousness pervades 
our whole institution that, in spite of the limitations of which © 
I am all too aware, I am filled with aspiration and hope for 
what this Seminary can do through its Department of Foreign 
Service. 

Just twenty years ago this month I went, fresh from college, 
for three years’ residence to India. There, with life still un- 
committed but in closest participation in mission work, I 
came as never before to see the incomparable riches that are 
in Jesus Christ, the greatness and the urgency and the possi- 
bility of the missionary enterprise. It was there I heard God’s 
call to commit my life to a world task. At the end of this 
period, having encountered in my class-room the keen minds 
of Muhammadan, Hindu, Parsee and Sikh, and deeply im- 
pressed with the baffling difficulties of missionary work, I 
came to study at Union Theological Seminary. I love and 
honor this Seminary with the affectionate loyalty of a son, 
since within her walls I found the spirit, the message, the 
apologetic which made it my joy to return as a witness to the 
Orient. The experience and the lessons of twelve years of mis- © 
sionary life I gladly place at your disposal. As your Professor 
of Missions I pledge loyal service to an enterprise which aims 
to give Jesus Christ his full opportunity with every human 
being and every aspect of organized society. For myself and 
for my students my highest longing is for intelligent, zealous, 
effective cooperation with the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ 
in the Christianization of a world. 


21 


V 


THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS 
By 


PROFESSOR WARD 
THE PRESENT TASK OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS 


To no section of Christian teaching does present circum- 
stance bring a sharper challenge than to its Ethics. In this 
domain vital positions are now under assault. In the aggres- 
sive pursuit of self-interest, a large and powerful section of 
mankind has been led to discard and denounce some of the 
hard-won moral gains of the race, and to silence those among 
them who see and would serve the common need of humanity. 
Other sections of mankind, hard pressed and weakened in 
defense of the common interest, are subtly tempted to abate 
their allegiance to ideals in which, by word and deed, they 
have vigorously reaffirmed their faith. Among them also, 
the forces of self-interest await the day of weariness to reassert 
their power. In such a time Christian ethical teaching finds its 
pressing business to be the upholding of those common moral 
standards which have been largely developed under its own 
tutelage, and which constitute the higher and more permanent 
interests of the race. These standards must be maintained 
alike against the foe without and the enemy within. No inch 
of ground can be yielded to either, no matter what the cost 
of holding it. For without its slowly acquired ethical posses- 
sions the race cannot live. 

In a desperate military situation, oftentimes the only pos- 
sible defense is a vigorous offensive. This is now the case with 
the ethical teaching and practice of Christianity. We cannot 
merely hold the ground gained in twenty centuries of develop- 
ment. If we do not advance, then we retreat. The larger issue 
of the present conflict is whether humanity shall take a long 
step forward in its associated development, or shall turn back 
upon the path that led away from the brutes, like them to 
perish. And that issue yet hangs in the balance, even though 


22 


more of the people of the earth than ever before in its history 
have fixed their faith and pledged their all to secure a higher 
order of life. Even though the dynamic forces of civilization’ 
are seething and surging in the endeavor to cut new channels 
for human progress, it is yet to be seen whether they can 
overcome the resistance before them. In such a situation 
Christianity is manifestly called upon to approve itself by some 
clear teaching concerning human conduct that shall bring 
light and leading to mankind. Against the desperate attack 
of an ethical philosophy whose core is self-interest, it must 
oppose the counter-offensive of an ethical philosophy and prac- 
tice whose heart is mutual service. 

The first step in this moral offensive is the further applica- 
tion of existing standards of conduct. In certain regions of life 
these are fairly well defined, for Christianity is an ethical 
religion. It is not content alone to secure intellectual alle- 
giance to an interpretation of life and of the universe. Its 
central appeal is to the will. Its test is “the fruits,” in character 
and conduct. In its historical development it has so far modi- 
fied the moral standards and the actions of humanity, that 
there is now a type of conduct which is commonly known as 
Christian. The man in the street has a somewhat sharp idea 
of what constitutes a Christian man. He is getting also a 
concept of what a Christian nation would be. Not the least 
of the factors in the present world situation is a Christian 
conscience in distinction from that generated by other religions. 
So much we may register as the Christian contribution to 
civilization without arrogance or conceit and with no dis- 
paragement of the ethical factors in other faiths. 

Yet it must be recognized that even these commonly ac- 
cepted Christian ethical standards flourish more vigorously 
in the realm of the ideal than in the sphere of conduct. The 
Socialist workingman who criticizes the church-member em- 
ployer and investor, is measuring them by a scale with which 
Christianity has provided him and which he himself does not 
live up to. There are, however, constant gains. The Christian 
of Fiji is a more valuable citizen of the world than his cannibal 
grandfather. The average church-member of England or the 
United States in the twentieth century is a higher ethical type 
than his forbear of the eighteenth. Yet a large part of our 


23 


ethical standards are more honored in the breach than in the 
observance. How different would the world be today if even 
a majority of professed Christians had embodied in every 
sphere of their conduct those standards to which they profess 
allegiance? One of the signs of promise is that so many people 
-are now determined to move in this direction; for example, to 
insist that obligations that bind individuals shall also hold 
nations. 

But to secure an ethical advance in the common life there 
must needs be an extension of ethical standards to unoccupied 
domains in the lives of individuals. The regions of conduct 
wherein the authority of the Christian ideal is not fully recog- 
nized are in matters of sex and questions of property. Here 
Christianity won its earliest ethical triumphs. It called its 
adherents apart from the uncleanness of a decadent Roman 
civilization. It developed a teaching and practice of the use 
of property for the common need. Some of these ethical gains 
have been capitalized in our modern social development, but 
neither the community life, nor the organized church is today 
drawing full interest from them. How many people, even 
among the membership of the church, order their sex life and 
their property relationships in a conscious attempt to apply 
the Christian ideal? A religious worker at the front reports 
a group of men as exhibiting their religious and ethical ideal 
in terms of the soldierly virtues—loyalty, courage, service and 
sacrifice. When asked concerning wine and women they re- 
plied with a laugh that those were personal matters that did 
not count. That way lies the disaster that always follows an 
unethical type of religion. Christian teaching cannot let men 
be content even with having fought together a good fight for 
the common cause. It has learned by bitter lessons that 
there are no purely personal virtues. It knows that the new 
world, for which these men have greatly suffered, can never 
exist except it be builded of the joined lives of men and women 
whose characters and dispositions, when associated, will pro- 
duce a new order of living. 

When the attempt is made to personally apply the Christian 
ideal in the relationships of sex and property, it is discovered 
on the one hand that the individual has plunged into the center 
of the social question, and on the other hand that the Christian 


24 


ideal is an ideal of community living. By the relationships of 
sex, society is perpetuated; through the relationships of prop- 
erty it is maintained. In these relationships center the vital 
ethical issues of the after-war period. How are the nations to 
recuperate their depleted populations? How are they jointly 
to order their economic life that there may be sufficient goods . 
for all? With these questions Christian ethical teaching must 
deal if it is to apply itself further in the sex life and property 
relationships of the individual. This undertaking is also the 
necessity of its own nature, for Christianity is a social religion. 
Its ideal is a God-filled, fraternal community. In the recent 
period of Christian history, there has been an ethical emphasis 
which has defined a Christian man. It remains for us to define 
a Christian community. This cannot be done alone upon 
stone or parchment or paper, but the Word must needs be- 
come flesh. 

It is a task of creation that awaits us. A new world is to be 
made, for in its concept of community life Christian teaching 
has no limits of geographical boundaries, political frontiers or 
racial differences. It thinks, and requires its adherents to act, 
in world terms. Its distinction, says one of another faith, is 
that it provides its followers with sharper ethical judgments 
than do other religions. But it also educates them to make 
these judgments from the standpoint of the entire common 
interest of humanity. Not only “under the aspect of eternity” 
does the Christian view the problems of life but also in the 
presence of all humanity. 

Herein lies the authority of Christian ethical teaching. Its 
“thus saith the Lord” rests not alone upon historic revelation 
but also upon the common suffrage of humanity. It risks its 
future upon the capacity of all the people for development in 
reason, in righteousness, in good-will. Christianity must 
indeed abide the verdict of the democratic process it has itself 
evolved. So far it has come by the willingness of mankind to 
respond to ideals which are the unfolding of man’s own higher 
nature. Now it must stand or fall upon its ability to retain 
the allegiance of the world democracy it is creating. 

This means that the remainder of the task of Christian ethics 
and the larger part of its answer to the challenge of the hour is 
the further development of its ideals of conduct. It is one of 


25 


the temptations of ecclesiastical administration to regard its 
standards, whether of dogma or conduct, as fixed and abso- 
lute. But the Christian ethical ideal is neither static, absolute 
nor infallible. It does not say to mankind: “Here is a set of 
principles, a form of conduct which is the highest that could 
be conceived or worked out several thousand years ago; ‘thus 
far shalt thou go and no farther’.” Its word is rather: “Greater 
things than these shall ye do also.” It is an organic growth, 
whose roots are in the stream of all human life and conduct. 
It is then the task of Christian ethics not only to know what 
obligations in conduct the teachings of the Bible carried in the 
day when they were spoken but to find out what will be the 
full form of the germ within them when it is developed in the 
environment of today, and also to discover what contributions 
have been and can be made to that development from other 
sources. 

Those sections of the associated life of mankind wherein the 
Christian ideal has been the least formulated are industry and 
the state. The political and economic relationships of man- 
kind have in the main developed outside the sphere of Christian 
thought and action. They have largely drawn their nourish- 
ment from other sources and their form from other schools of 
thought. In recent times large sections of organized Christian- 
ity have disclaimed all responsibility for the common political 
and economic life, and until the past decade American Protes- 
tantism has made no attempt to express the Christian ideal 
in industrial and political standards. It has finally been 
called to this attempt by a growing recognition of the social 
nature of Christianity and also by the pressing need of many 
of its adherents who have found themselves hard pressed in 
their religious life, because the church has taught them to 
love and to serve, and industry and the state have urged them 
to seek first their own interests and to regard others as com- 
petitors and enemies. For many a quickened Christian con- 
science, the ethical situation is so serious that again the cry 
sounds: “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” 
For these bound and suffering spirits there is no release until 
the Christian ideal is more clearly formulated in relation to 
the state and to industry. 


26 


Entering upon this undertaking Christian teaching finds 
itself confronted by an industrialism which insists that self- 
interest is the only adequate motive by which the world can 
provide for its common economic needs, that Christian ideals 
are impractical because they will not pay. Christian teaching 
is also met by a philosophy, and still more by a practice, of 
the state which again is based upon pure self-interest and seeks 
only material ends. That such a view of life should be glorified 
into a religion—the religion of the great state—is not so serious 
as that it should be widely followed by those who do not yield 
intellectual consent to it. The situation is crucial, because the 
organized form of human life for the future is necessarily the 
industrial state and human destiny hinges upon the question 
of whether the industrial world-community, which is an 
economic necessity, shall be organized for material ends around 
the ethics of self-interest or around the ethics of cooperative 
service with the common spiritual development as the goal. 

At this point, there is no doubt concerning the historic con- 
tent of Christian teaching; there can then be no hesitation or 
compromise in its attitude. In such a situation Christian 
teaching may properly speak with inherent authority for it 
has the message of life for humanity. It cannot consent to be 
subordinate to the economic and political organization of man- 
kind except as the Servant in the House, animating every 
section of life with its spirit, and therefore leading in and 
through its service. In bondage of compulsion it must refuse 
to serve. Behind its ethical teaching is the authority of a 
jealous God who will brook no rivals. Not even for its own 
sustenance will Christian teaching make terms with an indus- 
trialism which is not willing to attempt the working out of the 
Sermon on the Mount because it yields no gain to the profit- 
mongers. Not even for its own life will it bend the knee to a 
state which declares the necessity of its perpetuation and 
glorification to be superior to the imperative of morals and 
religion. Christian teaching has learned by this time that 
this supposed natural necessity of industry and the state is 
nothing but the need and desire of ruling classes to maintain 
and enlarge their own power and privilege. It knows still 
better from the story of its own past the ethical results of 
any compromise with idolatry. It is not to be tempted by any 


27 


vision of the kingdoms from which it may draw tribute if it 
will but bend the knee to Mammon. If need be, it can again 
take the open road and risk the uncertain lodging place. 

Yet Christian ethical teaching does not separate itself from 
the practical activities of men. It is not a mystic affair apart 
from industrial and political life. Because its ethical ideal has 
come out of the common life by historic development, it is in 
and of the stuff from which the day’s work as well as the dreams 
of eventide are made. It is to be, and is being, wrought into 
our food and clothes, our railroads and factories, our primaries 
and treaties. Not ready made from the sky does the City of 
our God—the House of Man’s Dream—come upon the earth, 
but the divine impulse achieves form in time and space only 
by the slow building of human hands, the slower welding of 
human hearts. 

Consider for example, that section of our task which is in- 
volved in the Christianizing of industry. Is this to be accom- 
plished by superimposing some abstract ideal upon the work 
life of the race, or by a process of development in which Chris- 
tian teaching utilizes the science of economics for its applica- 
tion? The Christian ideal for the economic life of men is a 
mutual service in the production and distribution of goods 
which shall be used for the enlargement of the highest life of 
all the people. Our present economic organization develops 
somewhat in this direction. The natural growth of the 
economic activities of mankind involves a discipline of co- 
ordination between larger and ever larger units. The produc- 
tion of goods evokes the sincerity and good-faith of true 
craftsmanship. The widening exchange of goods increases 
travel, promotes acquaintance, removes suspicion and enmity 
and paves the way for the exchange of spiritual goods. The 
necessity of business promotes honesty, fidelity, trust and 
loyalty. This process may be called the natural ethic of indus- 
trialism. Yet there is present another tendency, working in 
the opposite direction. When the economic process is carried 
on as a competitive struggle for the acquisition of material 
goods, the law of profit dominates the law of service, there 
develop friction, hatred and strife between classes and nations 
until economic capacity is destroyed. Thus is death the end 
of the natural process. The Christian teaching, however, 


28 


would develop the natural law of economic development into 
‘its spiritual content and possibility. It would inspire the 
classes and nations to organize the work process as a brother- 
hood of mutual service making for the largest and fullest life 
for all. Thus economic activities become a part of the spiritual 
life, which is endless. 

Consider again that section of the development of the ethical 
ideal of Christianity which is involved in the attempt to Chris- 
tianize the state. The present nationalistic state has its ethical 
values. It is not to be utterly cast out and some ideal scheme 
put in its place. It is a form of association evoking loyalty, 
calling forth supreme devotion, courage and sacrifice. It 
affords a discipline for the cultivation of heroic virtues. Herein 
is the natural ethic of the state. Yet the nationalistic state 
with its absolute sovereignty, its inevitable imperialism, ends 
by destroying both its virtues and itself. Evoking these vir- 
tues for limited ends, it creates widespread distrust of their 
worth, because it turns them into instruments of destruction. 
If it avoids revolt from within, it finally develops a world con- 
flict that wastes both itself and the future resources of man- 
kind. Even though it were able to flee the wrath of God, it 
could never escape the outraged conscience of mankind. Here 
again is death the completion of the natural process, and here 
again the Christian teaching would unfold the fuller content 
of the natural virtues of the state. It calls the separate states 
into a larger association in the service of the common life. 
Asking them to use their virtues for a nobler, greater end, it 
thereby develops them in greater degree. 

A League of Nations is now within the sober thought of 
mankind. Let it not be forgotten that the Christian teaching 
has long been calling the people of the earth to the goal ofa 
fraternal community. Let the leaders of Christian thought 
face fully the obligation of this heritage. Let them take their 
full part in the laborious task of giving it form and content 
as well as in developing those ethical qualities without which 
such an association is impossible. Let them also insist that — 
this next step in the development of the associated life of man- 
kind be not a mere partnership for material profit, but a mutual 
service for common spiritual development from which no 
classes or peoples are excluded. 


29 


This then, in briefest summary, is the present task of Chris- 
tian ethics: ZTo hearten mankind in the defense of accepted 
standards of Christian conduct; to require the further applica- 
tion of the Christian ideal in all the activities and relationships 
of life, particularly in matters of sex and property; and above 
all, to develop the content of the Christian ideal in terms of 
the world-wide cooperative community. Humanity stands at 
the forks of the road, choosing its course for a long time to 
come. It is the manifest obligation of Christian ethical teach- 
ing to direct men and nations away from the long travelled 
road that leads to destruction into the way of life—even life 
everlasting. 


30 


VI 


THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS 
By 


PROFESSOR LYMAN 
THE RELIGION OF DEMOCRACY ! 


The relation of religion to democracy is the most challenging 
problem in the field of the philosophy of religion at the present 
hour. Is religion a matter of indifference from the standpoint 
of democracy? Or is it even a serious obstruction to the 
democratic cause? As people become more democratic will 
they become less religious, and will democracy develop insti- 
tutions that will displace those of religion altogether, or at 
least, crowd them into a corner? Such questions as these re- 
ceive an affirmative answer from important groups among us 
—notably the socialists and organized labor in general, and, 
at the other end of the social scale, some of our more progres- 
sive intellectuals. The socialist and labor groups see in the 
church one of the chief defensive lifies of special privilege, and 
even in the more liberal interpretations of religion they find 
too little that is vitally connected with what they have most 
at heart. Those progressive intellectuals who are prepared to 
dispense with religion appear to feel that religion is, by its very 
nature, alien. to the democratic cause—that its goods are too 
otherworldly to promote social well-being, and that its virtues 
are too self-absorbed and acquiescent to develop social initia- 
tive. Science and democracy—yes, they are held to be com- 
patible, or capable of being made so. But religion and 
democracy are believed to be incapable of a helpful interaction 
with each other. 

But the rank and file of religious people themselves would 
have the questions put and answered very differently. Is not 
religion—they would ask—the absolutely indispensable ally 
of democracy? Must not the common man be made religious 


1 Owing to limitations of time only the introduction and first main section of 
this address were delivered at the time of inauguration. 


31 


before he can be trusted with democracy? Will men ever be 
unselfish enough to make democracy succeed unless they are 
first religious? Has not religion proven to be one of the great 
sources of democracy, and have not the attempts to establish 
democracies without an adequate religious basis always been 
failures? Is not irreligion, theoretical or practical, one of the . 
chief among the forces that have compelled democracy to fight 
for its security? And are not the institutions of religion vigor- 
ously supporting the war for democracy? Questions like these, 
while they may not have been at the forefront before the war, 
would be answered unhesitatingly in the affirmative by the 
great body of religious people. 

Now the existence of this sharp contrast of attitude between 
the groups mentioned is itself a menace to the democratic 
cause. It produces a state of social tension within the more 
idealistic portion of the community which is unfavorable to 
democratic development. A kind of balance of power is 
established between the left and right wings of the forces for 
democracy instead of the cooperative league that social pro- 
gress requires. Here, then, is a problem in the field of the 
philosophy of religion which is of the utmost practical impor- 
tance. The campaign for democracy suffers check partly by 
lack of co-ordination in the intelligence department. There is 
need for thoughtful examination of the grounds on which 
these sharply contrasting attitudes rest. Perhaps the struggle 
against class privilege and against illiberalism has blinded the 
eyes of the industrial and intellectual radicals to the presence 
in religion of great potentialities for democracy. Perhaps, 
also, existing religion has lurking within it elements of autoc- 
racy or aristocracy, carried over from the time when those 
principles largely dominated society, and remaining unsus- 
pected by most religious adherents. If so, an investigation 
should be ordered without delay. 

But something more than negative criticism, balancing off 
the errors of the contrasting groups against each other, will be 
required. Otherwise, like a battle plane which, during a fight, 
simply maintains its equilibrium, our argument will be con- 
stantly falling to the ground. An effort at constructive think- 
ing is also needed, which shall seek to bring out for the con- 
trasting groups some positive basis of cooperation. And, 


32 


fortunately, there is at least one constructive principle at hand 
upon which these divergent groups are bound to agree. We 
all, indeed, doubtless assent to the principle that the supreme 
test of religion hereafter will be its power to promote democratic 
progress. In humanity’s great struggle for freedom, justice 
and cooperative unity among all its sons religion must not be 
found wanting, if it is to survive at all. The religion of the 
future will be the religion of democracy. 

Assuming, then, that any positive solution of the problem 
before us turns primarily upon the degree in which our religion 
proves to be really a religion of democracy, let us go on to 
inquire what some of the main features of such a religion must 
be—making matters of negative criticism incidental to the 
effort at construction. And in this inquiry the following three 
questions will prove of service: Will the religion of democracy 
be anything more than an enthusiasm for democracy—democ- 
racy “touched with emotion?” How can it contribute to the 
further development of democracy? To what extent will it be 
a new religion? The attempt to answer these questions will 
lead us to consider the religion of democracy, first, as to its 
philosophical basis; secondly, as to its function; and thirdly, 
as to its method. 


I 


First, then, the philosophical basis of the religion of democ- 
racy. Will this religion be simply a worship of the democratic 
ideal—democracy “touched with emotion’—or will it be 
grounded in a valid experience of God? | 

This question, made familiar by Positivism and by Ethical 
Culture, will undoubtedly be thrust still more into the fore- 
ground by the war. As evidence of this, let me cite the position 
now taken by the former leader of modernism in the Catholic 
church, M. Loisy. This position, as reported in a recent num- 
ber of Fo et Vie, is as follows: There is developing under the 
stress of the war an idealism without God, which is destined 
to displace Christianity. We observe today, M. Loisy says, 
a religion of the fatherland that all Frenchmen profess. This 
religion of the fatherland, which was narrow, particularistic, is 
enlarging itself little by little and is in process of becoming a 
religion of humanity in which every fatherland will have its 


33 


place, because each will have its rights. The enthusiasm which 
this religion arouses in M. Loisy appears in the following direct 
quotation: “The moral notion of humanity, of human solidar- 
ity, gives to human existence a significance the grandeur of 
which cannot be exaggerated. . . It is a veritable faith, 
and it has its martyrs. . .” M. Loisy finds that the adher- 
ents of the old faiths are laying firm hold of this religion of the 
fatherland, which is turning into the religion of humanity. 
They do not, indeed, perceive its contradiction with Chris- 
tianity, which he holds to be essentially an otherworldly 
religion, but after the war they will discover that they have left 
the confines of Christianity. 

Now evidently the position thus described is no mere 
academic one. On the contrary, it throbs with the loyalty to 
country, with the idealism of humanity, and with the passion 
for reality, which are the nobler aspects of the present spiritual 
crisis, and to which we all are bound to respond. But does it 
rightly forecast that democratizing of religion which is bound 
to come? Will the religion of democracy be an idealism with- 
out God? 

So far from this being true, I would urge that faith in God 
will be the fundamental and permanent basis of the religion of 
democracy. And this for two reasons: first, the democratic 
ideal postulates a democratic God as the supreme power in the 
universe; second, this postulate can be verified from the facts 
of experience. 

In support of the first of these reasons there are one or two 
considerations that I wish briefly to submit to your attention, 
of which the most comprehensive is the following. As whole- 
hearted democrats, we need a universe in which democracy 
can succeed. And this means a universe in which a conscious 
purpose towards world-wide democracy is the controlling 
principle of natural and social evolution—in other words, a 
universe in which a democratic God is the supreme power. 
The reality of this need is unescapable as soon as one remem- 
bers that a blind universe is sure to defeat democracy in the 
end. A few words of Bertrand Russell’s will trenchantly bring 
out this fact: “Brief and powerless is Man’s life; on him and 
all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark. Blind 
to good and evil, reckless of destruction, omnipotent matter 


34 


rolls on its relentless way.” “All the labors of the ages, all the 
devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of 
human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of 
the solar system, and. . . the whole temple of Man’s 
achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the débris of 
a universe in ruins.” 2 These mercilessly frank words show the 
ultimate fate of democracy in a blind universe; and as we 
squarely contemplate that fate, it seems inevitable that we 
should recognize the need of democracy for a universe that is 
not blind, that has democracy as its conscious purpose, that is 
in the control of a democratic God. 

By this postulate of God which springs from the democratic 
ideal we, to be sure, should not mean that no one can possibly 
cherish that ideal who does not believe in God. Russell is in 
his own person a refutation of such an idea, and so are many 
others who, without a belief in God, are devoted to democracy. 
Nevertheless, as such men work for the democratic cause, 
they must do it with minds averted from the questions of 
ultimate destiny, or else with the heroic desperation of Russell. 
Similarly, soldiers may fight a rear-guard action to the bitter 
end, knowing that their whole division will be cut to pieces, 
or even that their whole army is certain of final defeat. But 
the morale of armies cannot be sustained on such attitudes of 
mind; and it seems scarcely less certain that the morale of © 
democracy cannot in the long run be kept up, if its ultimate 
defeat is believed to be inevitable because the universe is blind. 

If, on the other hand, one has a living faith in a democratic 
God, then in working for democracy he finds himself to be 
working with God. He does not need to avert his mind from 
the great questions of ultimate destiny, but instead may 
face them with the buoyancy of hope. He does not need to 
steel himself with the heroism of despair, for his sense of com- 
panionship with God lifts him into the more spontaneous and 
unconscious heroism of the faith that can remove mountains. 
And as he looks abroad on the democratic strivings of the 
masses, they cease to be a pathetically futile struggle, doomed 
to slow defeat, like vegetation climbing a lofty mountain and 
growing more and more stunted till it is lost in the icy barren- 
ness of the top; on the contrary they become mankind’s most 

2 Philosophical Essays, pp. 60, 61, 70. 


35 


promising enterprise—like the migration of a people from an 
arid steppe into a great zone of fertility—for the reason that 
the main trend of the cosmos, guided by the immanent pur- 
pose of God, is on their side. 

But some will wish to interpose here the query: Why does 
the democratic ideal postulate God as the supreme power of 
the universe? Why will not a very great God do, who is yet 
far from supreme? Or why may not democracy postulate a 
number of gods, corresponding to the different forms of 
human genius? William James once suggested that polytheism 
deserved new consideration, because all that a man needed 
was “something to trust for the next step.” Why then, so far 
as the democratic ideal is concerned, should one not be con- 
tent with the doctrine of a plurality of ultimate cosmic forces, 
or even of a plurality of gods? 

The answering of these queries leads to a second of the 
considerations mentioned as supporting the postulate of a 
democratic God as supreme in the universe. As democrats 
we need such a God because the democratic ideal aims at the 
organic unity of ethical values, and so needs a universe that 
works for the support instead of the defeat of that aim. The 
doctrine of a fundamental pluralism of cosmic forces—the 
doctrine of polytheism, or of a God hedged in by insensate 
powers—tends to support a radical pluralism of ethical ideals, 
which accords to each social group a moral code of its own. 
On the other hand, a universal human brotherhood postulates 
a universal Divine Fatherhood, and the supremacy of democ- 
racy as the organizing principle of human values postulates 
the supremacy of a democratic God as the guiding power of 
the universe. 

The extent to which a pluralistic ethics was gaining cur- 
rency at the beginning of this century has been too little noted, 
but it must be counted among the causes of our present world 
tragedy. And this pluralistic ethics tended to ally itself with 
a pluralistic view of ultimate cosmic forces. As at least a 
symptom of these tendencies let me cite a criticism of Christian 
ethics which appeared a few years ago, by H. W. Garrod, 
entitled “Christian, Greek, or Goth.” This author, a Fellow 
at Oxford, criticizes the Christian ideal, “the spiritual man,” 
and also the Greek ideal, “the man of understanding or intelli- 


36 


gence,” and praises by contrast what he calls the Gothic ideal, 
which he considers to be “the best kind of natural man,” and 
which has as its main virtues, chivalry and honor. And then 
he goes on to quote, as a not unworthy illustration of the kind 
of religious sentiment which he calls “braver and better than 
the Christian or Hellenic,” the following passage from Beau- 
mont and Fletcher: 


Divine Andate, thou who hold’st the reins 

Of furious battle and disordered war, 

And proudly roll’st thy swarty chariot wheels 

Over the heaps of wounds and carcasses, 

Sailing through seas of blood: thou sure steeled sternness, 
Give us this day good hearts, good enemies, 

Good blows on both sides, wounds that fear or flight 
Can claim no share in. 


One feels at once that this exaltation of the Gothic ideal, 
with its gory implications, could have been made only when 
a world war seemed an utter impossibility, and that it is very 
far from expressing the motive of those who are honestly 
fighting for democracy today. But most important for us now 
is the way in which this author further develops the religious 
implications of this ideal, under the caption, “The Religion of 
All Good Men.” This religion he portrays as a worship of 
power, and of the beauty which belongs to power. The good 
is included only as it is first proven to have power. In its 
expression this religion is concerned largely with hero-worship 
and with the worship of places made sacred by the ties of 
home and country; but with anything so vague and abstract 
as “humanity” it will have nothing to do. 

Here, then, is a sufficiently clear example of the disposition 
to give a kind of absoluteness to ethical ideals derived from 
racial genius, like the Gothic, which was increasingly prevalent 
before the war, and of the corresponding tendency to support 
such an ethics by a pluralistic view of the object of worship. 

But it is the disposition to give absoluteness to racial and 
national ideals that has proven to be the chief menace to 
democracy. Hence it is that democracy aims at the organic 
unity of all human values, and hence it postulates a universe 
that supports that aim. If democracy has found itself in 
vital danger because the Teutons were worshipping a Teuton 


37 


God, and if it needs to be on its guard lest also the Slavs prove 
to be worshippers of a Slavic God, the Latins of a Latin God 
and the Anglo-Saxons of an Anglo-Saxon God, then the need 
of democracy is not for a philosophy that will vindicate these 
narrow nationalisms, but for one that will sanction the effort 
to overcome them. If democracy has been flouted by a theory 
of evolution whose supreme principle was the Will to Power, 
it needs for its support a theory of evolution whose supreme 
principle is the Will to Service. If democracy is undermined 
wherever there is one ethics for the captain of industry, the 
great financier, the political leader, the empire builder, and 
another for the common man, it should welcome the aid of a 
religion that makes for the unifying of ethics, regardless of the 
special claims set up by the men of privilege. In short, when- 
ever our present military struggle may end, the war for 
democracy will be a long war, will require the alliance of all 
the realms of genuine human interests, and will turn at last 
upon the success with which the resources of these realms 
are organized under a single High Command. That is to say, 
the God postulated by the democratic ideal will be the supreme 
power in the universe. 

But our argument that faith in God will be the fundamental 
and permanent basis of the religion of democracy rests upon 
something more than a postulate. There is, as I have already 
said, a second main reason for this argument, namely: The 
postulate of a democratic God as the supreme power in the 
universe can be verified from the facts of experience. We must 
now briefly consider in what this verification consists. 

Most broadly viewed the verification consists in the trend 
of evolution towards world-democracy. Evolution in the 
animal and early human stages cannot, of course, show definite 
democratic results, although it produces those purposeful and 
social functions without which no democracy could later arise. 
But as human evolution proceeds, it becomes increasingly 
evident that progress and democracy are bound up together. 
It was the democracy of the Hebrew prophets that made 
Palestine the cradle of the world’s most ethical religion. It 
was the democratic organization of the Athenian aristocracy 
that gave the world its most harmonious culture. It was as a 
republic that Rome laid the foundations for its contribution 


38 


to human progress. It was the relative democracy of the free 
cities of Europe during the Middle Ages which made them 
distributing centers for civilization. It was the growth of 
democratic institutions in western Europe and America that 
fostered modern science, education, and economic enterprise. 
And today the greater part of the western world is dominated 
by the principle of political democracy and is reaching out 
toward some more highly socialized form of democratic life. 
Facts like these certainly afford important verification of the 
faith in a Central World-Purpose towards democracy. 

And there is further verification in the fact that independent 
streams of social evolution make for similar democratic re- 
sults. This argument, employed by Bergson in the biological 
realm to prove an immanent directive tendency, has still more 
significance in the social realm. China has produced a type of 
democracy which, even though it be still relatively primitive, 
is of immense importance for the future of humanity. Russia, 
in spite of the incubus of despotism, has developed a democracy 
of her own which, though temporarily debauched by its own 
sudden success, will surely emerge into sobriety and play a 
great part in the new world. India brought forth in Buddhism 
one of the great democratic revolutions in religion and is now 
restlessly feeling out towards political democracy. Movements 
like these, largely segregated from each other and from the © 
greater movement in the west, make for the corroboration of 
the belief that a unified conscious Purpose towards democracy 
is immanent in social evolution. 

But it will be objected: These trends toward democracy 
are very partial and interrupted, and besides them there are 
other trends of a different nature—trends towards autocracy, 
towards exploitation, towards empire. How then can it be 
that evolution affords any real verification for so vast an idea 
as that of a Divine Purpose towards democracy guiding the 
process as a whole? 

In reply it must be pointed out that democracy cannot be 
manufactured, it must grow. It cannot be set up swiftly and 
perfectly like the Hebrew Tabernacle, each part of which was 
patterned in heaven; it must be organized slowly and with 
uneven progress, as a fruitful land is won from the wilderness. 
Moreover, a Central World-Purpose towards democracy can- 


39 


not work by the methods of autocracy. The God of a demo- 
cratic theism will not have sovereignty as his chief attribute. 
He will not be like a monarch who tolerates lése majesté. 
He will be like Jesus—sometimes denied, sometimes betrayed, 
often misunderstood. Clearly, if we are to find evidence in 
nature and history for a democratic God, we must avoid setting 
up undemocratic tests of his activity. 

But the more intensive verification of a Divine Purpose 
towards world-democracy is to be found in present democratic 
experience. If we feel in our hearts a passion for democracy 
as the richest, noblest form of human life; if we are gaining 
some clear, convincing insights as to how a better democracy 
than we now possess may be achieved; if we find ourselves 
lifted to a great resolve that this passion arid this insight 
shall control all our efforts; then we are already having the 
kind of experience that belongs to a life with God—with the 
only kind of God in whom, as defenders of the democratic ideal, 
we ought to believe. We have a right, therefore, to accept 
such experience as so much evidence of the reality of God, and, 
by so doing, to make the most of what the experience brings 
us. If, again as we look abroad upon human society, we see 
there a mighty purpose to defend the democracy we already 
have and to develop a new and better one; if we find this 
purpose to be the one really unifying principle of society and 
the chief hope of progress; then we have all the material we 
need for the experience of actually co-working with God in 
the world. And this experience, so far as it brings new strength 
and insight for social service, supplies cumulative evidence for 
the reality of a democratic God. 

It is, of course, quite true that, according to this interpreta- 
tion, the belief in a conscious World-Purpose towards democ- 
racy will be only partly a matter of evidence, and will remain 
to an important degree a matter of courage and faith. But 
what meaning for men today would there be in a religion of 
democracy that was not pervaded by courage and faith at 
every point? Yet the courage and faith need not be those of 
the averted mind or defiant will—held in the face of an indif- 
ferent or hostile universe, and in imminent danger of passing 
over into despair. They may instead be open-eyed, strong and 
buoyant, because sustained by a growing evidence of the co- 


40 


working of God. And since the enterprise of democracy is so 
vast that every resource for its promotion ought to be drawn 
upon to the full, we are justified in the confidence that the 
coming religion of democracy will be no mere democracy 
“touched with emotion,” but will have as its philosophical 
basis a reasoned faith in a democratic God. 


II 


But the verification of a theistic religion of democracy 
turns, in the long run, on the answer to our second question: 
How can such a religion contribute to the further development 
of democracy? We must proceed, then, to the consideration 
of this question; that is to say, we must seek some compre- 
hensive conception of the function which the religion of 
democracy may hope to fulfil. 

Our discussion of this topic is facilitated by the fact that two 
great goals for the development of democracy in the immediate 
future are taking on pretty clear shape in the public mind. 
These goals are industrial democracy and internationalism. 
The validity of these goals is, of course, by no means a matter 
of demonstration as yet. They cannot be said to be the 
assured results of sociology or of political science. But they 
certainly have established themselves as great working 
hypotheses, the reasonableness of which the present war has 
only served to strengthen. Accepted as such they give to 
our question a more specific form. It becomes the question: 
In what way can the religion of democracy help towards the 
attainment of industrial democracy and of internationalism? 

Now with respect to industrial democracy there is a deep- 
going dualism of opinion, which often threatens to become a 
complete deadlock, and which therefore must be solved if 
democratic progress is to goon. Let us note what this dualism 
is, for I believe that it will prove to be of precisely the kind 
that the religion of democracy may hope to solve. 

On the one hand there is what may be called the benevolent 
employer theory of the welfare of the masses. I heard this 
theory rather graphically set forth a couple of years ago at a 
religious conference by an excellent representative of the 
benevolent employer class, in some such words as these: 


AI 


In the old days Jim and his employer worked side by side, and 
there was perfect mutual understanding. Then the business 
flourished, the employer built a great house on the hill, and 
Jim and the numerous other employees lived’in small houses 
at the foot of the hill. Still all was well. The employer knew 
Jim and his fellows personally, and they in turn had confidence 
in him. If Jim fell sick, his place was kept for him, his wages 
were continued, the employer’s wife drove around to Jim’s 
house with flowers and fruit, and the employer paid the doc- 
tor’s bills. In short, the employer had the welfare of all his 
employees at heart, and they in turn were entirely loyal 
to him. 

Then came the time when the business grew immensely 
larger, and the great house on the hill was abandoned for a 
luxurious house in the metropolis, another at the seashore, and 
still another in the mountains. The employer no longer knew 
his men, and the men dealt only with the employer’s cold- 
blooded agents, appointed to get results. Strikes, lockouts, 
boycotts, and blacklists then followed in due course. The 
whole cause of these evils was that the employer had ceased 
to be the benevolent employer, and the sufficient remedy was 
to return to the old relations between the great house on the 
hill and the small houses at the foot. The situation thus 
sketched by this employer himself had one other feature of 
importance which he omitted. He totally disbelieved in 
recognizing labor unions, and would not even tolerate union- 
ism in his shops. It might be added, too, that he gave a 
thousand dollars for the objects of the conference. 

Now this benevolent employer theory evidently does not 
aim at industrial democracy at all. It holds that to be a 
false ideal, because it requires of the masses of men an intelli- 
gence and unselfishness of which they are incapable, because 
it never could make production efficient, and because it inter- 
feres with the natural and legal rights of the employers. So 
it maintains that political democracy is enough, and that, if 
only employers will be benevolent, the welfare of the masses 
will be secured better than in any other way. 

But over against this benevolent employer theory stands 
the theory very widespread among the masses as to their own 
welfare—the theory of economic determinism and class war. 


42 


This theory holds that economic opportunity is the only 
determiner of man’s capacity, that so far as the masses lack 
capacity for industrial democracy it is due solely to economic 
oppression by the privileged classes, and that hence the true 
remedy for social evils is a class war which shall issue in the 
expropriation of the privileged classes. A corollary of this 
theory is that most of the institutions valued by the privileged 
classes—the church; the schools, or at least the body of 
intellectuals that run them; the courts; and the state in 
general as now constituted—are simply means by which those 
classes have entrenched themselves in order to maintain their 
privileges. 

This theory, then, repudiates the idea of the benevolent 
employer and the grateful and loyal employee and aims 
directly at industrial democracy. But the means it would 
employ seem to endanger the goal. For economic determin- 
ism and class war involve the overthrow of the chief sources of 
the democracy we already have, and give poor promise of 
developing in the masses of men the capacities on which so 
vast an enterprise as industrial democracy will necessarily 
depend. 

Here, therefore, is a dualism of opinion which is seriously 
retarding democratic progress today, and which, if not re- 
moved, may well become fatal to such progress. And what 
does the religion of democracy offer towards its removal? 
It approaches the question from a new and more fundamental 
standpoint—a standpoint made possible by the resources 
which we already have brought out. It reminds us that a 
democratic society is the purpose of God himself, and so is 
something far richer and completer than we have yet attained. 
It reminds us, too, that human personalities are sons of God, 
and therefore possess far greater capacities than we in our 
unfaith have dreamed. And it tells us that there is an experi- 
ence of co-working with God in which all things become possi- 
ble and for which constantly new possibilities for mankind 
unfold. 

And so it says to the benevolent employer: Your benevo- 
lence is far too limited an affair. It does not extend to the 
fundamental matter in the life of your employees—the rela- 
tion of their work to the development of their personalities. 


43 


If you would really serve your men, you must help to make 
them free. And their freedom must consist in something more 
than higher wages and shorter hours; it must extend to self- 
direction in their work. Moreover, you must not be content 
with aiming at this freedom for your own employees—thus 
making it one more instance of your benevolence. But you 
must aim at a social order in which this freedom shall be 
secured for all workmen as a matter of justice. In short, you 
are not benevolent in a thorough-going way unless you are 
aiming at an industrial democracy. 

And similarly, the religion of democracy says to those 
who have espoused the doctrine of economic determinism 
and class war: You have set forth, in industrial democracy, 
the true ideal. You have a right to aspire to freedom and 
self-direction in the field of industry. But you have not 
grasped the fundamental conditions for the attainment of 
this ideal. You cannot really be free unless you are at the 
same time skilled to serve. Let your economic determinism 
become creative self-determination and your class war become 
the fight for social progress as a whole. There are elements 
of democracy in the faith of the churches, in the science of the 
intellectuals and in the institutions of political life, without 
which industrial democracy can never come to pass. There is 
a democratic trend in social evolution which is the manifesta- 
tion of the purpose of God. Your ideal is bold and your pro- 
gram radical; make them still bolder and more radical by 
thinking of yourselves as sons of God and industrial democ- 
racy as the will of God. And then you will have great added 
resources for developing those capacities of human personality 
which alone can make industrial democracy succeed. 

Thus the religion of democracy overcomes the dualism of 
opinion so threatening to industrial democracy because it 
develops radically socialized personalities. Its watchwords 
are: freedom, service, and faith—no true freedom except that 
which serves; no real service which does not set free; and the 
fullest freedom and service where there is faith in God and 
fellowship with him in the toil of the world. 

But we must turn for a moment to the other part of our 
question—How can the religion of democracy help towards 
internationalism? 


44 


The Great War has become for most of us a mighty struggle 
for the preservation of democracy. But it is growing more 
and more evident to thoughtful minds that the preservation 
of democracy cannot be secured apart from its extension. 
That is to say, we must go forward to internationalism, or 
else our democracy will be robbed of much that makes it of 
such priceless value. But internationalism, like industrial 
democracy, is threatened by a far-reaching dualism of opinion. 
It is the dualism between the idea of benevolent imperialism 
on the one hand and the bare idea of the self-determination of 
peoples on the other. And it is as a means of overcoming this 
dualism that the capacity of the religion of democracy to pro- 
mote democratic development can be brought out. 

The idea of benevolent imperialism was popularized by 
Kipling’s poem, “The White Man’s Burden:” 


Take up the White Man’s burden— 
Send forth the best ye breed— 
Go bind your sons to exile 
To serve your captives’ need; 
To wait in heavy harness, 
On fluttered folk and wild— 
Your new-caught, sullen peoples, 
Half-devil and half-child. 


It has been given theoretical expression by such writers as 
Benjamin Kidd. In the essay The Control of the Tropics, for 
example, Kidd, after criticizing the Dutch and the French 
colonial policies, argues that the tropics should be permanently 
administered by the Anglo-Saxon race as a trust for civiliza- 
tion. His chief reasons are: that civilization cannot get on 
without the raw materials from the tropics; that the tropics 
cannot be colonized by white people; that the people of the 
tropics can never govern themselves; and that only the Anglo- 
Saxons have developed the faculty for administering the 
tropics with due regard for the natives. 

Now this benevolent imperialism is radically different from 
junkerism. It definitely repudiates the imperialism of ex- 
ploitation, and it sanctions only ethical aims and methods. And 
though in actual practice it seldom appears in its pure form, 
it has done the world great service. But after all its ethic is 
aristocratic rather than democratic. It does not aim at world 


45 


democracy. And the time has come when doctrines that fall 
short of aiming at world democracy are dangerous to existing 
democracy. In particular this benevolent imperialism, because 
its ethic is aristocratic, develops a serious state of tension 
between itself and the idea of the self-determination of peoples. 

The idea of the self-determination of peoples has come for- 
ward in the world’s consciousness today as an essential part of 
democratic ethics. But in its actual manifestations, particu- 
larly among the Slavs, it appears to be pushed in a purely 
abstract and unpractical fashion that is in danger of playing 
over into the hands of imperialism. All is inchoate and in 
flux at this point, of course, and one cannot speak with any con- 
fidence as to the present meaning of the idea in question. But 
one thing seems clear. For the future the self-determination of 
peoples must be guaranteed by some form of internationalism, 
and any use of the idea that would make the relation between 
the self-determined peoples nothing but “a fortuitous concourse 
of atoms” is foredoomed to produce its own failure. 

But in the case of this dualism between benevolent imperi- 
alism and the bare idea of the self-determination of peoples, 
as in the case of the dualism previously mentioned, the religion 
of democracy has a part to play. It summons the benevolent 
imperialist to a more far-reaching purpose and to a greater 
faith in mankind. In other words, it asks him to transform 
his aristocratic ethics into one that is genuinely democratic, 
and to abandon his benevolent imperialism for internation- 
alism. If there were no God and no fundamental spiritual 
kinship in mankind, then, indeed, the ideal of internationalism 
might be merely utopian. But if God himself is working 
towards world democracy, and if internationalism lies upon 
the pathway thither, then it cannot fail to come to pass, if only 
men will become co-workers with God and sharers in his 
purpose. 

And for the radical believer in the self-determination of 
peoples, in turn, the religion of democracy also has its message. 
It invites him to a less pessimistic view of the world as it now 
is—even including the Great War—and to a less apocalyptic 
ideal for the future. It asks him to put more faith in the method 
of evolution and less in the method of revolution. It urges 
that God has been in the social evolution of the past, not as its 


46 


sole determiner, but as a great guiding power working in con- 
junction with men. It holds that nationalism, in spite of its 
sins, is a real achievement in social evolution and a needed 
step towards internationalism. And so it teaches that self- 
determination, for peoples as well as for individuals, must be. 
a matter of growth and can be secured only through education 
and international cooperation. And it appeals to peoples—as 
well as to individuals—to couple freedom and service, and to 
think of themselves as co-workers with God. 

We have, then, in the vital relation of the religion of democ- 
racy to industrial democracy and to internationalism, impor- 
tant evidence that this religion has a most significant function 
to perform in democracy’s further development. We have 
brought out this relation, in each case, only at a single point, 
but if our reasoning has been at all sound, many other points 
of connection may readily be found. Moreover, as the future 
unfolds, we may well anticipate that many new answers to the 
question: How can the religion of democracy promote the 
further development of democracy? will appear. And it is 
enough for our present purpose if we have shown, even by way 
of suggestion, that the next great steps in democratic develop- 
ment require the religion of democracy for their accomplish- 
ment. 

Nor should we fail to note that the answer gained to our 
first question has now received genuine reinforcement. For 
if the service of democratic religion to industrial democracy 
and internationalism depends in a fundamental way upon faith 
in a God who purposes democracy and upon the experience of 
co-working with him, additional evidence that such a God is 
really there will be increasingly at hand as democracy pro- 
gresses, and the religion of democracy that the present situa- 
tion portends will be theistic. 


Il 


But it is time for us to turn to our third question: To what 
extent will the religion of democracy be a new religion? The 
religion of humanity that Loisy foresees is, in his judgment, 
destined to displace Christianity, not only because it will be 
an idealism without God, but also because it will be a religion 


47 


of this earth, and of human progress, whereas Christianity is 
essentially an otherworldly religion. Must not, then, the 
religion of democracy, as we have found it to be taking shape 
in the midst of our present crisis—even though it be an 
idealism grounded in God—also stand forth as a thoroughly 
new religion, and hence as one which, so far as it succeeds, is 
destined to displace Christianity? Are not its ideals—indus- 
trial democracy, internationalism, continuous and ceaseless 
democratic development—entirely different from those that 
Christianity in the past has been cherishing? And is not its 
theism—presenting, as it does, a God immanent in natural 
and social evolution—thoroughly at variance with the idea 
of God that has prevailed in historic Christianity? 

The answer to these questions depends largely on our 
conception of the method by which the religion of democracy 
can best serve the cause of democracy asa whole. If we think 
of the religion of democracy as furnishing the fixed norms of a 
new social order that can be set up suddenly by revolution— 
just as the older forms of faith have been believed to furnish 
the fixed norms for the old social order—then indeed we 
should regard it as a totally new religion. It will be, in fact, 
simply a philosophy of social revolution, supplying the funda- 
mental featuces of the revolutionary program. But if we 
think of the religion of democracy as furnishing creative ideas 
for a new social order that is to come to pass by evolution, we 
should cut its tap root if we regarded it as a totally new 
religion. It will, on the contrary, seek to preserve its con- 
tinuity with all that is vital in the religion of the past, and 
will find in history much material that is fndispensable to 
creative life in the present. 

We may safely assume, I think, that it is the method of 
creative evolution rather than that of the revolutionary 
program which is most in accord with our reasoning thus far. 
And on this assumption I venture to formulate an answer to 
our question: The religion of democracy will be neither a new 
religion displacing Christianity, nor will 1t be identical with any 
historic form of Christianity, but it will be Christianity recreating 
itself for the new age. We must give the remainder of our 
time to testing this answer and the method on which it 
depends. 


48 


The first part of this answer—that the religion of democ- 
racy will not be a new religion displacing Christianity—is 
borne out by the fact that Christianity, whenever it has 
manifested itself with new life, has proven to be essentially 
democratic. Jesus was, in Dean Bosworth’s phrase, “the 
people’s prophet,” and his gospel was a gospel of democracy. 
Not that Jesus had a program of political and social reform. 
One may not so misread the story of his life. But his whole 
message and career took shape through the sharpest antag- 
onism to the aristocratic religion and ethics of Phariseeism, 
and were profoundly liberating for the common people. And 
here is the sufficient reply to Loisy’s position, so far as the New 
Testament is concerned. For while undoubtedly apocalyptic 
religion, with its otherworldly scheme, furnished the only 
soil upon which the people’s prophet could work, yet the 
really significant fact is that from that soil he produced a 
movement which was wonderfully emancipating, both reli- 
giously and socially, for the masses of his fellowmen.. 

In its early expansion, too, Christianity, while having no 
political program, was a powerful democratic force. It broke 
down every “middle wall of partition,” whether between Jew 
and Gentile, or Greek and barbarian, or male and female, or 
master and slave. And if the otherworldly scheme became, 
as Gerald B. Smith has so well shown,’ a means for establishing © 
an aristocratic ethics in the Christian church, yet Christianity 
proved to have within itself a democratic ferment that could 
escape the new bondage. The Bible was always a powerful 
leaven for democracy. The Reformation, with its doctrines 
of justification by faith, freedom of conscience, and the 
presence of the Holy Spirit in the Christian believer, was a 
mighty democratic advance—notwithstanding the alliance 
which its leaders were too ready to form with the principle of 
external authority and with the established political order. So, 
too, Puritanism, however far short of democracy it may have 
fallen, was a long step towardsit. What democracy would we 
have to fight for today, if it had not been for Puritanism? And 
the Wesleyan movement in its turn both stimulated democratic 
progress and helped it tosucceed. Nor is evidence wanting that 
these and similar movements in Protestant Christianity still 


3 Cf., Social Idealism and the Changing Theology. 


Of Se ee a 


49 


have vitality for the democratic cause. A competent observer 
tells me that many of the leaders in the British Labor Party 
received their training in public speech and in moral idealism 
through the chapels of the free churches of England. Modern 
social Christianity, too, is a force that no lover of democracy 
can wisely neglect. And while the armies of the allies are fight- 
ing today a mighty defensive campaign for democracy, the 
chief offensive for world-wide democracy belongs to the far- 
flung battle line of foreign missions. 

If, then, the religion of democracy is to work by evolution, 
it will recognize itself as continuous with the more vital forms 
of historic Christianity. It may draw, like a mighty river, 
from many tributaries to swell its tide, but its head-waters 
will always be in the New Testament, and as it moves on 
through the centuries, fertilizing civilization, supplying it 
with power, and bearing the commerce of its thought and 
life, the direction and the urge of its main current will be due 
primarily to the religion of Jesus. 

But this first part of our answer cannot be maintained with- 
out the second part: The religion of democracy will not be 
simply identical with any historic form of Christianity. No 
historic creed can be its final norm, no venerable ecclesiastical 
system can form its enduring temple, no canonized scriptures 
can set bounds to its revelation. Nor can any neatly ration- 
alized or liberalized scheme of Christian thought be forever 
its chart and compass. All such attempts to secure a religion 
of democracy by selecting, as its absolutely changeless basis, 
certain historic forms or elements of Christianity are doomed 
to failure. For the religion of democracy—this is our hypothe- 
sis—works by the method of creative evolution. Its function 
is to help produce a democratic world order and to contribute 
to ceaseless democratic development; and for this it needs 
from the past, not fixed norms, but creative ideas. Whatever 
thoughts it takes from the past must be re-thought, whatever 
types of experience it seeks to reproduce must at the same time 
be remolded, if it is to play a real part in human progress. 
And only through such creative use can historic Christianity 
remain a perpetual source of democracy. If we treat Christian 
truth simply as a cargo to be freighted from the past into the 
future, then, as a food supply for democracy, it will soon be- 


50 


come exhausted. But if we treat Christian truth as seed—to 
be cultivated by constantly new means and in ceaselessly new 
varieties—there is good reason to believe that its increasing 
fruitfulness will keep pace with democracy’s growing needs. 
And so, when we emphasize the essential oneness of the 
religion of democracy with the vital forms of historic Chris- 
tianity, we must make sure that we are doing it in the right 
way. Liberal Christianity in recent decades has been going 
“back to Christ,” and in doing so has been brought nearer to 
the life of democracy—witness, the fact that it is to Jesus that 
the working classes respond with welcome, more than to any- 
_ thing else in Christianity. And many of us now feel that this 
movement back to Christ must mean helping men to become 
sharers—each according to the measure of his capacity—in 
the religion of Jesus himself. But even at this point we need 
to be on our guard—not lest we should go too far, but lest we 
should not go far enough. In the last analysis it is the moral 
and spiritual creativity of Jesus, made possible by his experi- 
ence of God, that we want to appropriate. Jesus has meaning 
for us supremely because he was what we want to be—the 
creator of a new and more democratic age. We owe to him 
and his movement, more than to any other person or event, our 
chance for such a new age. But we shall loyally respond to our 
indebtedness only as every thought and every experience that 
we derive from him takes on fresh meaning for our own minds 
and gives us some measure of creative power for our own time. 
When, then, the complaint is made that Jesus lacked some of 
the interests that are most important for us—the interest in 
art, or in science, or in political reform, or in the labor problem 
—or when it is charged against him that medern social methods 
have set aside some of his precepts—charity organization re- 
placing almsgiving, provident societies superseding the taking 
of no thought for the morrow, organization of force for social 
protection proving more adequate than absolute non-resistance 
—when such complaints are made, we reply: It is well that 
Jesus did not anticipate all these interests and work out all 
these methods. What he did was to take a stand for human 
values in the name of God, to attack whatever endangered 
those values in the concrete situations of his own environment, 
and so to simplify and unify those values as to create a new 


51 


leaven for civilization. And he expressly repudiated the atti- 
tude of those who build the tombs of the dead prophets and 
stone the new ones that God sends. 


Children of men! not that your age excel 
In pride of life the ages of your sires, 

But that ye think clear, feel deep, bear fruit well, 
The Friend of Man desires. 


And so the final stress must fall upon the third part of our 
answer. The religion of democracy will be Christianity re- 
creating itself for the new age. Great creative ideas for 
democracy Christianity certainly has. The faith in the father- 
hood of God, the ideal of the sonship of man, the goal of a king- 
dom of God on earth, the method of human brotherhood, the 
principle of freedom through service, the hope of personal and 
social immortality, the instrument of the organized fellowship 
of believers, the servant nation—from the Old Testament— 
forgiveness, redemption through love and its limitless power of 
sacrifice—these ideas are big with meaning for democratic 
progress. There is no one of them, of course, that may not be 
immobilized and rendered barren by a merely formal or tradi- 
tional use. They may all be used in a merely individualistic 
or exclusively mystical way, their social meaning may be 
missed, and so they may be made to minister to an aristocratic 
instead of a democratic ethics. But taken as a means for pro- 
ducing the experience of co-working with God in the midst of 
our present social tasks they will be found to be full of creative 
power. They will prove positive constructive forces for the 
next great steps in democracy: industrial democracy and in- 
ternationalism. “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear!” 

But in the nature of the case the claim that the religion of 
democracy will be Christianity re-creating itself for democratic 
ends cannot be established simply by amassing evidence out of 
history. It must be regarded as a great summons, issuing from 
our present spiritual situation, and to be vindicated by the 
response that it secures. If Christianity desires to be the 
religion of democracy it must address itself humbly and 
whole-heartedly to the work of its own re-creation. Its 
theology must be thought through again from the democratic 
standpoint. Its Biblical interpretation must be given new 


52 


scope and passion by addressing itself to democratic needs. 
Its church organization must be ready for the melting-pot, 
if need be, that it may become a real instrument for democ- 
racy. And its evangelistic and educational methods must be 
made plastic to the ever enlarging requirements of democratic 
progress. 

Moreover, the summons to a democratic re-creation of 
Christianity cannot be rightly responded to without the pro- 
gressive assimilation by Christianity of all large human inter- 
ests. The warfare between science and theology has often 
been proclaimed to be over, but it is a question whether it has 
yet issued in a democratic peace. The separation of the 
church and the state is for us an accomplished fact, but not 
their efficient cooperation. The production of wealth, the 
development of art, the organization of play have all been 
given religious sanction in these days, but they have not yet 
been thoroughly humanized and ethicized by being assimilated 
heartily into the Christian program of the Kingdom of God. 
The democracy of the future must provide for the rank and file 
of men a rich life, and the religion that is to serve democracy 
must be eager to assimilate all that contributes to life’s 
enrichment. 

Fortunately, signs are not wanting that this self-re-creation 
of Christianity is already going on. Our seminaries contain 
professors of religious education, of Christian theology and 
ethics, of Biblical and historical interpretation, and of practical 
theology who are working for the democratic ideal. Our 
churches are arousing themselves to the task of bearing an 
efficient part in the world struggle for democracy. And among 
the masses of the common people there are here and there 
stirrings of a real movement towards a more democratized 
Christianity. Yet these signs of re-creative power should by 
no means satisfy us. They simply furnish encouragement for 
a much more aggressive pushing of the great campaign and for 
a much fuller coordination of its moral aims. 

It is, then, of much significance that this summons to a 
democratic re-creation of Christianity is in these very days 
being heard and responded to across the Atlantic. Paul 
Doumergue, the editor of Foz et Vie, after stating Loisy’s theory 
of an idealism without God that is to displace Christianity, 


93 


which we cited at the outset, goes on to discuss it; and his con- 
clusion is that: “For a new democracy we need a revitalized 
Christianity.” For the success of democracy without Chris- 
tianity he sees small hope. “No thoughtful person doubts”— 
I quote his words—“that after the war there will be, under the 
form of peace, a time of trial quite as severe as the war itself. 
It will be necessary to repair the ruins: ruins material, of 
cities, of homes, of public and private fortunes—ruins spiritual: 
diminished number of births, social conventions laid low in the 
dust, all the forms of wholesome custom broken; and for this 
superhuman effort the country will have only a body politic 
bled white by the wounds and mutilations of the war.” But 
Doumergue finds that no mere work of restoration will suffice, 
but that the entire social order will have to be remodelled. 
But this great re-creative work can be accomplished by us only 
as we ourselves are new men. “In truth,” he affirms—again I 
quote—“for the making of the new world there will be need of 
a great deal of faith, of idealism, of courage, of renunciation of 
material interests and the principle of each for himself; there 
will be need of a great deal of sacrifice. Does anyone really 
believe that it will be possible to dispense with Christians?” 
But the Christianity that can meet this crisis will not be, 
in Doumergue’s judgment, simply‘ the Christianity of the 
existing churches. “The Christianity of tomorrow” to which 
he points will be one whose leading ideas—creation, incarna- 
tion, redemption—will have been transmuted into present 
experiences of the living God and guiding principles for per- 
sonal and social living. And so he concludes that Christianity 
can and will be the religion of democracy, but only on the 
condition that it be a Christianity revitalized—renewed. 
The deepest motives of the present hour spring from the 
sense of the solidarity between our national destiny and the 
cause of democratic idealism across the sea. Under the com- 
pulsion of this new consciousness we are sending millions of 
our youth to France and billions of our wealth to all the Allies. 
And out of this same sense of solidarity comes a challenge to 
our deepest religious life as well, as the words of the French 
Protestant thinker just quoted make clear. Democracy 
needs a religion; but this need can be adequately met only 
by a religion grounded in a living experience of the Christian 


54 


God. In the task of building a new democracy Christianity 
has a great new opportunity; but this opportunity can be 
met only as Christianity proves to have within itself abun- 
dant re-creative power. ‘These are facts that will become 
increasingly evident on both sides of the Atlantic. As Chris- 
tian teachers and thinkers let us wholeheartedly respond to 
the challenge that these facts present. Let us join hands with 
all Christian teachers and thinkers who love democracy, in 
France, in England, in any country on the face of the earth, 
and address ourselves unitedly to the task of re-thinking Chris- 
tianity in democratic terms and of energizing democracy with 
Christian faith, in order that the old world may not die in 
its travail until the new world has been born. 


OTe ae 


55 


Vil 
SPIRITUAL LEADERSHIP 


Commencement Address, 1918 
By 


PROFESSOR HENRY PRESERVED SMITH 


“War is the father of all things, and the one thing worth 
taking into account is change.” This is-not the dictum of a 
recent observer reflecting on the world-conflict which now over- 
shadows all other events. It is the opinion of one of the earliest 
Greek philosophers, and he was moved not by the conflicts 
which raged chronically among the Greek states, but by what 
he saw going on in the world of nature. He anticipated the 
natural science of our own day which has given us the formula 
“the struggle for existence.” The ancient philosopher and the 
modern investigator agree in this paradox: The only thing per- 
manent is that there is nothing permanent; everything is in 
flux and flow. | 

That this truth is brought home to us by the world-situation 
in which we find ourselves is only too evident. It seems to be 
the irony of history that when men think they have arrived at 
something firm on which they can rely they are roughly shaken 
out of theirdream. Five years ago we were congratulating our- 
selves on the progress which peace was making in the world. 
The Hague conferences seemed to promise a comparatively 
settled state of society, in which the nations could pursue the 
aims of civilization in friendly rivalry and mutual helpfulness, 
without resort to the last argument of kings. Then came the 
great catastrophe and gave us a rude awakening. It was as 
though, having built our house on what seemed to be a solid 
rock, we suddenly heard the rumble of an earthquake, felt the 
ground beneath us rock like the deck of a ship in a storm, and 
saw our walls laid in shapeless masses of rubbish about our feet. 

Nor is it otherwise in the intellectual world. Here, also, the 
law of change is ceaselessly at work. No sooner does a thinker 
elaborate a final philosophy, a system which explains nature 


56 


and man and God, than some daring investigator challenges his 
premises and overthrows his conclusions, himself to be over- 
come in turn. In the domain of ethics many a teacher has 
drawn up what he supposed to be the perfect code for human 
guidance. Perhaps he was a law-giver, and promulgated his 
statutes with all the authority which the most solemn sanc- 
tions could give. Or perhaps he was a moral teacher, setting 
forth counsels of perfection, instructions for those who are 
seeking the right path. In either case, the supposed perfect 
system was unable to resist the law of change, and now the 
most of these codes, like the systems of the philosophers, exist 
only as so many monuments of an outgrown past. 

Doubtless the first effect of this discovery of the law of 
change is discouragement. So the Hebrew sage found it. 
Observing the ceaseless flow of the rivers, the monotonous 
journey of the sun through the heavens, the constant shifting 
of the winds from one quarter of the compass to another, he 
exclaimed: “All things are full of weariness; vanity of vanities; 
all is vanity, and a striving after wind.” But before giving way 
to this mood, let us notice one thing which may give the mat- 
ter a different aspect. This is that change is the condition of 
progress. If, indeed, all human history were simply a remorse- 
less grind, with nothing new under the sun, then we might 
despair. But if there is progress, slow and uncertain as it may 
seem to us, then we may take heart. If we may go farther and 
say that change is the very condition on which true mental 
activity depends, we have a double reason for encouragement. 
We may remind ourselves here of an oft-quoted and oft- 
refuted saying of Lessing. His words are: “Not the truth 
which a man possesses, or supposes himself to possess, makes 
his worth, but the honest pains he takes to get hold of the 
truth. His powers expand not by possession but by investi- 
gation of the truth, and in these powers alone his growing 
perfection consists. The possession of truth makes one in- 
active, sluggish, conceited. If God held in his right hand all 
truth, and in his left hand only the ever eager and active 
search for truth, but with the condition that I should always 
make mistakes, and if He should say, ‘Choose!’ I should 
humbly bow towards the left hand and say, “Father, give me 
this; the absolute truth is for Thee alone.” The language 


37 


which I have thus quoted does seem indeed to intimate that 
all our efforts after the truth will be of no avail; but this is not 
what the author intended. He was confronted by two classes 
of dogmatists, each of which claimed to be in possession of 
the truth. On one side were the orthodox, secure in the con- 
fidence that their system was given by an infallible revelation; 
on the other were the rationalists, equally confident that their 
system was given them by the infallible human reason. 
Lessing cried to both parties: Your fixed system is of no good 
to you; truth is not something that can be learned by rote. 
It must be sought by earnest effort; the mind must wrestle 
with it, as Jacob did with the angel, and its value is in the 
very effort which the mind makes to appropriate it. And the 
same holds true in the moral life. If we can conceive of the 
state of mind of a man who should say that he had attained 
perfection and that he needed to make no more effort to live 
the right life, we shall at once say that such a man is sorely 
self-deceived, or that he is deceiving others. As some one has 
said, the moral life is like the flight of a bird in the air, it is 
sustained by constant effort and when exertion ceases, we drop. 

It is here that we must correct our notion of evolution. To 
our time, evolution has become the catchword which solves all 
riddles, and there is reason to think that we rely upon the 
process which it connotes as if it were automatic, something 
mechanical which will bring about a state of perfection without 
conscious effort on our part. Perhaps we deceive ourselves by 
using the phrase ‘the survival of the fittest’ as though the fittest 
to survive were always the one which morally we could approve 
as the best and highest. But in the jungle the fittest to survive 
is the cruel and rapacious tiger, and in the tropical swamp the 
fittest to survive is the ungainly alligator. If the law were to 
work in the world of man, as it does in the world of brutes, it 
might give the pre-eminence to the man most cruel and rapa- 
cious, if at the same time he had the most physical strength. 
But we know by observation that the advance of society does 
not proceed along these lines. And the reason is not far to seek. 
The animal who survives his fellows because he is stronger or 
swifter than they does not reflect on the desirability of strength 
or speed. But the man who attains something better than his 
predecessors has at least some idea of what he is striving for. 


58 


The progress of society depends upon the intelligent choice of 
the members of society. As has been well said: “Man is now 
as civilized, rational and humane as he is because man in the 
past has changed things into shapes more satisfying, and has 
changed parts of his own nature into traits more satisfying, to 
man as a whole.” 

This fact is not always recognized. In our search for some- 
thing permanent in the flow of things we fix upon what we call 
the primitive motives, and assert that they are the real un- 
changeable element in the history of mankind. We look at 
the savage and say: This is man, and here we may find the 
secret of his history. And, so looking at him, we add: It is 
plain that the elemental passions, hunger, lust, hate and fear, 
account for all his actions. The simplicity of this hypothesis 
attracts us at once, and we easily find facts that seem to con- 
firm it. Our novelists delight to strip off the mask worn by 
civilized man and show us the savage whom they take to be 
the real man. And that the elemental motives are still power- 
ful in those of us who suppose ourselves to be the most ad- 
vanced in character we are sometimes obliged to confess. But 
when we assume that these elemental motives are all-powerful, 
we are at once confronted by facts of another nature. Power- 
ful as they are, men are ever struggling to overcome them; at 
least to regulate them, to bring them under the control of 
something different, to put them in the second place. The 
whole drama of human history is in fact the struggle between 
this something other—let us call it at once the spiritual, as 
distinguished from the material or animal—the struggle be- 
tween this other and the more primitive forces. All art, all 
science and all religion witness to this never-ceasing warfare. 

One thing more needs to be taken into consideration, and it 
is this which deserves our special attention. This is that 
human progress needs and always has had leaders. The 
mass of men are indeed moved largely by the elemental 
passions of which I have spoken. But here and there an indi- 
vidual has a vision of something higher and seeks to attain it. 
Let us take the case of so obvious a virtue as truthfulness. To 
men in what we call the lower stages of civilization this does 
not seem a desirable quality. Even when well beyond savagery 
men think it safer to deceive their fellows than to tell the 


OE OR OER TT eS 


‘tlly P 





; 
; 
; 
. 


39 


truth. “Lying is the salt of a man,” is an Arab proverb which 
would find approval even at the present day. Evidence of the 
reluctance of men to tell the truth, and to keep their promises, 
is given by the elaborate devices, oaths and sanctions by 
which they have sought to bind their fellows. Now at some 
point in the upward progress of the race there was borne in on 
some individual the conviction that it is more worthy of a 
human being always to tell exactly what is so, and to keep the 
promises once made even if no oath has been required or taken. 
This conviction was not motived either by desire or fear, for 
these would tend in the other direction. The man had an 
intuition that this quality of veracity is in itself better than 
lying, even if it brings no material advantage. On this ground 
it is that the Psalmist commends the man who swears to his 
own hurt and changes not, and this shows what the enlight- 
ened conscience declares. My point is that such a man be- 
comes a leader by the very fact of his embodying his ideal in 
his conduct. Doubtless he will at first be called unpractical 
and visionary by the majority of his fellows. But if he is 
steadfast in obeying his conscience, he will at last win their 
respect; the more thoughtful will follow his example; and in 
time the standard of conduct in that community will be 
changed, and truthfulness will become one of the recognized 
virtues. This is the result of leadership, either indirect by 
example, or direct by precept and exhortation. 

I have supposed a case of leadership in the development of 
morality. Turn now to the history of human thought, and 
notice such an illustration as is given us by Socrates. In him 
we see a man who was certainly dominated by something 
other than the primitive passions. He found in himself an 
ineradicable desire to know the nature of man, especially the 
moral nature of man. In endeavoring to satisfy this desire, as 
you will remember, he inquired into the nature of justice. 
Here he was confronted by one Thrasymachus, whom we may 
take as a type of the materialist. To him the problem stated 
by Socrates was easily solved. Justice, said he, is simply the 
right of the strongest; might makes right, and there is nothing 
else to be taken into account. We need not go into the argu- 
ment which followed. What concerns us is the fact that the 
sufficient refutation was the example of Socrates himself. 


60 


Here was a man who ignored the so-called primal instincts. 
What he should eat and what he should drink, how he should 
gratify his passions—these were to him negligible questions. 
His days and nights were spent in seeking knowledge. Had 
Thrasymachus expostulated with him and said: “Socrates, you 
have good abilities; why not devote them to something prac- 
tical? You might make a fortune for yourself, if you would go 
into business; or you might attain high office in the state if 
you would go into politics.” Had he made such an appeal we 
know very well what the answer would have been. The phil- 
osopher knew of higher values than wealth or office, and he 
devoted his life to the pursuit of these higher values. 

What the example shows us is that Socrates by his emphasis 
of these higher concerns awakened in other minds an appreci- 
ation of them, and thereby became a leader, the real founder 
of a school of thinkers which has not ceased to have influence 
‘twenty-three centuries after his death. Doubtless to some of 
his contemporaries his course was unintelligible. They could 
not see that there was any money in it for him, and any other 
than material advantage was beyond their comprehension. 
Take the similar case of the Old Testament prophet. In the 
days of Jeroboam the Second, of Israel, there was a great boom 
in business. Trade had followed the flag. The leading men of 
the nation congratulated themselves that they had command 
of the situation, both in the military and in the commercial 
sense. Religion, too, seemed to be flourishing. The services 
had never been so well attended and had never been con- 
ducted with so rich a ritual. Only one man sounded a dis- 
cordant note in the general chorus of rejoicing. This was a 
plain countryman who appeared at the chief sanctuary and 
rudely interrupted the worship with the demand: “Let justice 
flow down as a river and right as a perennial stream.” The 
only way in which the official minister of religion could inter- 
pret so unmannerly a proceeding was by supposing the 
preacher out for gain for himself. What he said was, in effect: 
“Amos, there is nothing in this street preaching for you; you 
cannot take up a collection here, and the police have their 
eye on all disorderly characters. Go down to Judah; perhaps 
you can make your living there.” The answer of the prophet 
shows how mistaken was the priest: “The lion roars, who will 


61 


not fear; the Lord Jehovah has spoken, who can refrain from 
prophesying?” And Amos was only one of a long line of men 
equally unmindful of material gain. 

These examples show the method of advance by spiritual 
leadership. In a society which is seemingly absorbed in the 
pursuit of material things, there arises a man who has a vision 
of something higher. This vision has compelling power. 
Within the man himself it may be a disturbing element, and 
he may have to fight a strenuous battle to bring the passions 
into subjection to it. When it prevails he becomes a leader. 
Often this is not by his own choice. He would perhaps prefer 
by his example to be a simple witness to the reality of virtue. 
But his contemporaries cannot remain ignorant that in him 
self-control has overcome appetite, courage has overmastered 
fear, love has taken the place of hatred. By this very example 
he takes the lead, and men look up to him with an affection 
comparable only to that which they feel for a father. 

These are ancient examples. Let us turn to our own time. 
What is the reason that in the present crisis we hear so many 
criticisms of the Church? Loudly we hear it proclaimed that 
Christianity has failed, because it has not prevented the war. 
Bitterly men complain that the churches have not given a clear 
and unequivocal declaration of principles, such a declaration 
as would make men realize exactly what their duty is in such 
a crisis. And the ministry is assailed, because, as is alleged, it 
has sat contentedly by the fire, warming itself while the great- 
est tragedy of history is enacted at its very doors. 

It is not my purpose to refute these charges, or to defend 
the Churches and the ministry. Let us take to ourselves any 
criticism that is justified, and repent of our timidity or slug- 
gishness. What now concerns us is that the complaints and 
criticisms show that men are demanding leadership in moral 
and spiritual affairs, and that they look to the Churches and 
the ministry to furnish it. And who shall say that the demand 
is unwarranted? Is it not the claim of the Church that it not 
only instructs men in right living, but that it gives them the 
motive which alone is able to overcome the natural passions 
and appetites? To doubt that this is its mission would be to 
deny its birthright. Yet to affirm it in the present crisis may 
seem too bold. This is an age of democracy, it will be said. 


62 


Men are no longer amenable to teachers who claim a divine 
right. But to this the reply is obvious: An age of democracy 
is just the age when the true teacher comes to his own. The 
mass of men need guidance all the more when the power is in 
their hands. The appeal to force must be replaced by the 
appeal to reason, and he will be the true leader who is able to 
persuade men of the truth. 

It is said that after the war we shall have a new world, and 
all our old institutions will be thrown into the crucible in order 
that a new society may be brought forth. In this there is 
something of truth but also something of exaggeration. It is 
dangerous to predict what the future has in store, but of one 
thing we may be sure, human nature will remain what it has 
always been, and the struggle between lower and higher will 
go on as before. We may say also with some confidence that 
what we have already attained will persist. That is, moral 
values which by hard fighting we have gained in past ages, will 
still claim our loyalty. The standard of character for the indi- 
vidual will still include those fruits of the spirit which the 
Apostle so engagingly sets before us—love, joy, peace, pa- 
tience, fidelity and self-control. And it is evident even to 
superficial observation that the line of progress is already 
marked out for us. What is now demanded is the extension 
of these individual virtues to the larger units which we call 
nations. No other conclusion can be reached by one who con- 
siders the present outcry against secret diplomacy. As in the 
intercourse of man with man we demand that one should speak 
the truth openly, so now the conscience of mankind is demand- 
ing that the nations should be open and aboveboard in their 
intercourse with each other. An ancient prophet in answering 
an inquirer as to the path of duty said: What doth the Lord 
require of thee except to deal justly and love mercy and walk 
humbly with thy God? The most obtuse observer will confess 
that if groups, societies, corporations, communities, and na- 
tions were to act according to this simple rule the reign of God 
- for which we look would already have begun. 

That consummation is still far away, but we are moving 
towards it. Surveying the path along which we have come, it is 
plain that the moral and spiritual advance has been not only 
intensive, but also extensive. That is, the ideal of character 


SS Se 


63 


has not only become more elevated but the responsibility of 
the group has become better realized. In the primitive horde 
there was no thought of duties toward any one outside the 
group, and that was a group of limited size, perhaps less than 
a hundred individuals. All mankind outside was frankly 
treated as hostile or as legitimate prey. From that stage we 
have moved forward by extending our interest and obligation, 
first to the tribe, then to the city, then to the nation, and now 
vaguely we realize that we owe something to all mankind. 
We are holding these larger groups to the law of morality, and 
it is here that the preacher of righteousness must apply his 
standard. This is implied by the criticisms we have already 


. considered. These criticisms are in strange contrast with some 


that we have heard in times past. Often when the minister 
has attempted to apply the ten commandments to state or 
nation he has been reminded that it was his duty to preach 
the Gospel, and not to meddle in politics. Or if he attempted 
to show that corporate morality lags far behind the standard 
which we apply to individuals he was told that he knew 
nothing of business. True it is that the minister is not a poli- 
ticlan and that he is not a business man. But he is a specialist 
in the art of right living, and nothing that concerns human life 
is foreign to his interest or outside his sphere of influence. 
Whether the world will be a different world after the present 
crisis is past depends on whether we will to have it different, 
and whether we make a sincere effort to put the will into action. 
Undoubtedly we have much to encourage us. The crisis has 
brought out unsuspected stores of heroism. Our hearts have 
been thrilled by the willingness of our sons to lay down their 
lives in the cause of liberty, by the eagerness of our daughters 
to bring help to their brothers in arms, and most of all, per- 
haps, by the readiness of fathers and mothers to give their 
dearest treasures to the great cause. We have faith that the 
same spirit of devotion will show itself when we face the prob- 
lems of reconstruction. But we cannot close our eyes to one 
fact; that is, that it is more difficult to live for our ideal, and 
for human brotherhood, than it is to die for them. To take up 
the monotonous tasks of daily life and perform them with 
fidelity, calls for as much courage and more steadfastness than 
to brace one’s self for the charge upon the enemy’s lines at the 


64 


hour of supreme activity. There will always be need of men 
to encourage and instruct those who desire to be faithful to 
the daily round, and perhaps the need will be greater after 
this upheaval than before. The first danger at the close of the 
conflict will come from the great weariness and lassitude of 
men who, having made a mighty effort, suffer from the 
reaction. Moreover, many of the finest spirits, the idealists 
who would have contributed to our advance, will no longer be 
with us. The generation now coming onto the stage will be 
only a broken fragment of what it ought to have been. And 
the load of debt under which all the nations will be staggering 
will make purely material interests absorb much of the atten- 
tion and effort that would otherwise have gone to the up- 
building of society. These considerations show us that the 
need of wise leadership will be as great as ever, even greater 
than ever. 

What, then, are the qualities which will be demanded of 
those who are called to this high task? This is the question 
which concerns us here. To answer it we may look again at 
the criticisms which have been so freely directed at the Church 
and the ministry. These show at least what the common 
opinion demands. First is the charge of a lack of intelligence. 
The ministers did not discern the signs of the time, it is said. 
To this it is not enough to say that neither did anyone else, for — 
we have a right to expect the minister of religion to know some 
things which escape the observation of the man in the street. 
No one could foresee the storm which has burst on the world, 
but the thoughtful student of humanity and history might 
have seen whither the nations were tending in their mad race 
for armaments. He whose horizon was bounded by the limits 
of his own parish, and who took no interest in national affairs, 
may well reproach himself with failure. 

A graver charge is that men have lacked courage. Excuses 
may be found for a man who is ignorant. He may not have 
had competent instructors; he may have been perplexed by 
the complication of movements in modern society. But for 
cowardice there is no excuse. He who shrinks from declaring 
the mind of God because of his fear of men has thrown away 
his chance for usefulness. Fortunately we are able to point 
to a noble army of witnesses for the truth whose lives and 


65 


deaths prove that courage has never been lacking to the 
ministers of religion. The history of religion is the history of 
reformers, and the reformer is the man who stands out bravely 
against the traditions and the vested interests of his own time. 
Hence the tragedy of religious history. Jeremiah uttering his 
message to a generation which refuses to hear; which regards 
him asa madman; which puts him in the stocks; which arrays 
his nearest kinsmen against him, is only one in a long line of 
men who have been faithful to their convictions. Our con- 
fidence is that the line is not yet ended, and that when occa- 
sion arises like courage and self-sacrifice will be shown by the 
preachers of truth. 

And finally, let us say that courage must be founded on faith. 
Taking a long look at the course over which mankind has come 
we see that there has been progress. With many an eddy in 
the stream there has been movement from a lower to a higher 
stage. There has been advance in moral ideals both for the 
individual and for society. Much remains to be done. But 
faith tells us that the divine power which has impelled this 
movement from the start is still at work, and that if we are 
faithful it will not fail us. It is this faith which makes us real 
spiritual leaders. By. it we see the spirit of God at work 
beneath this long process of human advance. By His inspira- 
tion the prophets and reformers have been moved to mark 
out the path by which advance has been made. It is He who 
puts into our hearts that ideal of a kingdom of righteousness 
and peace which nerves us to strenuous effort on His behalf. 
Therefore we work out not only our own salvation but the 
salvation of humanity, because it is He that works in us both 
to will and to do of His good pleasure. 


& Pees 


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